To players of the Deadly Dozen.

[Bottom of the Well]

Is it worth it? I liked the previous dlcs in the last star point game and loved the base game of this one but does it really add to the game? Now by that i mean... is it Like more area to explore and take over or is it sorta a basic mod as if people just added new ships to the game?

[Zenoslaf]

Originally posted by Alcohol Fueled Brewtality:

The final boss of the DLC is literally impossible to defeat without modding the game to cheat.

Please stop spamming this in every thread because it's not true. It's your experience, and we talked about it at lenghts, we told you we will nerf it on Easy, but it's far from impossible. Many people already finished it and didn't complain about difficulty. Calling them cheaters is unfair and is against rules of this forums and community because it's insulting. Please don't do that.

[Avenger93]

Originally posted by Zeno - Gemini Warlord:

Originally posted by Alcohol Fueled Brewtality:

The final boss of the DLC is literally impossible to defeat without modding the game to cheat.

Please stop spamming this in every thread because it's not true. It's your experience, and we talked about it at lenghts, we told you we will nerf it on Easy, but it's far from impossible. Many people already finished it and didn't complain about difficulty. Calling them cheaters is unfair and is against rules of this forums and community because it's insulting. Please don't do that.

Having gone ahead and tried doing it without cheats ... yeah it can be done. Even on harder difficulties. But dear lord does it take an insane investment of time and effort to do it. You are more likely to finish the campaign and have all the map conquered before you can take on this one ship. I had maxed out dreads of the formidable mk 2 variety (highest DPS) the 4 warmasters maxed out, single target killing build, rank 50, padded the fleet with eiras mk2 and nibiru mk 2 (my favorite gunboat cruisers), damage amplifier on myself, expose naturaly from both me a nyca, I was cruising in a Formidable myself and using full hatred 3 loadout angled the ship to get as many guns firing at one. She died ... but no before killing all my warmasters (charged in like chumps), a not insignificant chunk of the fleet (I think I had only some formidables left at the end, I forgot to screenshot the moment). and the cost in consumables and heavy weapons if that is in any way relevant.

The fight is not impossible without cheating. But dear sweet lord does it demand too much. A bounty is a bounty, not a damned titan ship in disguise that would shrug off a direct blast from the proxima (speaking of which, WHY can't I bring the proxima to shoot her off the face of the universe?) and still kill msot of your fleet. I do think it's way too powerfull for the reward provided. The ship you get is nowhere near that strong, having the ability to put it in your fleets is hampered by the eternal uselessness of carrier in the hands of the AI, and the alternative new warmaster is suffering from the sam vanguard in a squishy carrier syndrome that makes Higgs the weakes of the bunch.

Oh well, time to do that mod I was planning to fix fighters, make all ships that can use them do so and give the warmasters some ships that actualy compliment their skills rather than go against them.

[Avenger93]

Or, and I apologize for the spam, to put why I think this fight is too hard: the reward for the fight nowhere near matches the investment needed to win it. The monetary bounty will not even come close to covering for the lost ships, the perun itself is not some be all end all ship that dominates everything like a Titan would, Perun in fleets ... you just spent so many resources loosing a giant fleet so a more expensive ship for fleets is counter-intuitive, not to mention it's a carrier which automaticalty gimps it, and the warmaster like I touched above is not that big of a force multiplier. Simply put: for the investment of resources into winning this fight legit, the reward is so comicaly small as to render the fight not worth doing unless for the sheer challenge factor alone. It's one carrier. Not a Titan Class, not a Planet buster, one carrier. I agree you should have to come with friends to beat her, but not to such a degree it makes the final campaign mission of the game look like a walk in the park.

So there's 2 avenues to balance the fight: make it easier, or make the rewards actualy be worth the investment.

[76561198156207256]

With the newest patch coming today there is a greater nerf on the hull regeneration properties on easier difficulties and some more changes to more accurately display the difficulty of the encounter.

What nobody who complained about end game bounties seemed to notice yet:


- Bounties get progressively weaker with each 25% part of hull down, both in regeneration and in damage. You have around 16/17 bounties to experiment with and learn this before you are met with the ultimate challenge of the end game bounties
- We expected that players would use all abilities at their disposal, this includes: items, skills, fleet compositions, aggro management(taking a few hits and then letting your fleet take some punishment), your ship and system loadout, enhancements, perks etc.
- Respecing your character into the necessary skill set, I recommend having both the Ram with the stun and disable ability, along with smart usage of execute if you want to do it a lot faster
- Vanguard Warmasters can use higher level ram skill to completely disable targets for a short duration, you can use this to your advantage
- Weapons with lower average dps but better dps when firing for long periods of time could be very useful but it depends a lot on your way of playing and ship settings.

Also I have no idea why it isn't appropriately described but I am quite sure expose affects shield damage only.

Good job if you have come to any of those conclusions on your own and managed to beat the ultimate challenge, it for sure wasn't designed as easy! :)

With the newest incoming patch the end game bounties are still hard and will punish both you and your fleet, hard and extreme will still require game knowledge and preparation to beat them, I would really feel bad to trivialize this for people who demand challenge as there are other difficulties too. On normal it should be quite easier due to cutting the regeneration almost in half and on easy it is trivial depending on your fleet power. With newest incoming patch on Easy I "AFK"/auto fired without using any skills/equipment/tactics with APOPHIS III and just regular station enhancements in a Deadly Premonition with 60k power fleet(along with higher level warmasters).

[Burusagi]

Originally posted by Maximus:

- Bounties get progressively weaker with each 25% part of hull down, both in regeneration and in damage. You have around 16/17 bounties to experiment with and learn this before you are met with the ultimate challenge of the end game bounties

LOL - because Daze will never fall below 99% that doesn't matter. Her regen is way too much for that to even become relevant.

Really, her encounter is fine in terms of damage she deals and all that. It is just that her regen needs a serious curbstomping to make the encounter beatable.

[76561198156207256]

Beaten her a few times before I made the incoming changes for the newest patch. 60k fleet(with leveled warmasters so Tara can stun her), stock enhancements, apophis III in a Deadly Premonition(fighters are quite helpful in my opinion). It is very much doable if you don't lose your fleet dps potential. But it is the end game content, I guess we didn't stress this enough. New changes will help.

[Burusagi]

Originally posted by Maximus:

Beaten her a few times before I made the incoming changes for the newest patch. 60k fleet(with leveled warmasters so Tara can stun her), stock enhancements, apophis III in a Deadly Premonition(fighters are quite helpful in my opinion). It is very much doable if you don't lose your fleet dps potential. But it is the end game content, I guess we didn't stress this enough. New changes will help.

Is there some magical way to stop her hull regeneration I don't know of? Because I'm having the same 60k fleet (and 700+ DPS on my Dreads personal turrets) and even on Easy she will not even get to the point where you see a % of her hull.

She may occasionally dip down to 99% but it will almost instantly go back to full.

This is me even trying my best to squeeze out the max possible damage on her with things like Perk-boosted SETH-turrets and the 'Expose' skill to potentially increase my own and the fleet's damage.

Yet, it doesn't move below 99% - even on easy. Is there some kind of bug her that tripples her regeneration in my game or something? Is it an ability that is supposed to have a cooldown that she, for whatever reason, can keep up 24/7 when she is not supposed to?

I'm all for challenges - I'm a huge Dark Souls-fan. Gitting gud is in my blud. But this isn't a challenge - this is just impossible due to how overloaded her regen-rate is. There is no input that I as the player can provide here that makes any difference whatsoever.

[Avenger93]

Originally posted by Maximus:

- Bounties get progressively weaker with each 25% part of hull down, both in regeneration and in damage. You have around 16/17 bounties to experiment with and learn this before you are met with the ultimate challenge of the end game bounties
- We expected that players would use all abilities at their disposal, this includes: items, skills, fleet compositions, aggro management(taking a few hits and then letting your fleet take some punishment), your ship and system loadout, enhancements, perks etc.

Also I have no idea why it isn't appropriately described but I am quite sure expose affects shield damage only.

that is in no way shape or form explained in game. It just says damage amplification: x% on the skill.

And the description of the skill is word for word this: A short-range energy detonation blasts against the target, revealing its weaknesses. For a short time, the target's defenses are reduced. Use the opportunity and deal the decisive strike.

That does not say shield anywhere, it says defenses which I take to mean: ALL forms of defenses on the enemy, shield and armor mitigation. Coupled with the damage amplification text in the skill, it broadcasts loud and clear that it as a skill amplifies all damage received by a target by x percentage, not that it lowers the shield of the enemy by x percentage.

And if expose realy obly just lowers the shield ... then it went from one of the best skills in game to a "never use this" skill in a heartbeat. I've yet to run into a ship whose shields lasts more than a second to combined end-level tier firepower, even from the hatred 3 which as all railguns deals much smaller shield damage compared to it's hull dps.

As for bounties getting weaker the weaker their ship gets ... is that coded in right? It may just be personal perception but I am not seeing that affect in any way. Hell if anything I had a few bounties where they magicaly got a boost of toughness near the end of the fight before I spammed my last round of skills at them.

And yes, I agree, you should plan and prepare for the toughest of these bounties and use as many tricks as you can to win them. The problem is as I mentioned above: the investment cost in time and resources to beat this on harder difficulties is nowhere near covered by the reward offered at all. I won't go into the details again so I don't repeat myself. But if the whole reward is "you do it for the challenge!" that applies to a small minority of gamers and even then: it works exactly once. I can't tell you how the highest green bounty looks, or even most of the green bounties. Because after going through the red ones to get the Perun I came to the easy conclusion that the low tier ones are not worth the investment due to time wasted hunting lackeys, and the high tier ones are not worh the money and resources I will waste in fleet power to take them down, as the rewards do not even cover the investment at all. The only bounty marginaly worth doing is Daze because you get a new ship, the problem is ... doing this bounty fair means that new ship is nothing but a collector item as you very likely are in end-game status at that point with most fo the map painted yelllow just to field a large enough fleet to take her down. Getting the Perun a lot sooner would actualy be of some use in the campaign/free-play, as would the Perun in fleets option or the warmaster option.

As the bounty system stands right now and the difficulty too: I did it once on hard fair and with no cheats/hidden OP weapons from the secret starbase. I will never touch the bounty system again or do any further bounties unless restarting the campaign and then I will just probably drop the game to easy, speedrun the deadly dozen realy early in the campaign to get the Perun, then go back.

I hope that when titan ships get added, they are a quest that will be hard, but not so hard you need to have actualy conquered most of the map to have the fleet needed to win. Because like the Perun, titan ships then just become dead weight in the garrage with no enemy to use them on.

EDIT: and just as a further note on bounties in general ... when I think bounty hunter I think expert tracker and hunter stalking his prey, all ending in a "pistols at dawn" kind of final showdown between 2 oponents of extreme skill, the hunter and the prey.

What doesn't cross my mind in any way when thinking bounty hunter in SF or any other terms is dude who conquered half the galaxy and has a ginourmous fleet acompanying him vs one single ship.

Boba Fett was ONE guy in a gunship more feared than entire armadas. Because he would find you and he would take you down. Same deal with IG-88. Anywhere in fiction you look a bounty hunter is ONE guy chasing down ONE or multiple targets and taking them all down by his lonesome against odds that he should loose against.

as it stands right now, your targets are better representative of the bounty-hunter feel to an extent that anything you have to do to catch them.

There's an outline for greatness in the backgrounds and lore of these bounty targets, too bad the actual implementation fails at making you feel think or act like a bounty hunter at all and if you stop to think for a few seconds ... let's just say the moment a gaint 60K firepower fleet enters the region, those guys will hightail it to their hiding spot and not poke their head out again until the fleet leaves. And yes I know it says these guys escaped large fleets in their time, I never once imagined them destroying giant fleets solo, I always read that line as "they are slipery and smart enough to outwit large fleets and escape their grasp.

[Burusagi]

Honestly, are the devs actually playing the live version I wonder? This encounter is literally impossible because of her hull regen on live.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=953351691


- 60k Fleet Power-fleet of Mk II Dreads/Cruisers and Warmasters all focus firing.
- 700+ DPS turrets on my Helios, buffed with Railgun III Perk.
- 700+ DPS POLARIS heavy weapon, buffed with Heavy Weapons Perk.
- SETH turrets buffed with Minelayer II Perk.
- Damage Amp consumable.
- 'Exposed' skill.
- Not one, but two Wings of bombers buffed by the HAAN III enchantment.

Yet her hull will never dip below 99% - often not even under 100% so it will not even show a percentage. Other than modding the game in order to cheat, how am I supposed to find more damage to pour onto this b!tch? How?

Can you stop with this "it is supposed to be a challenge"-pretense and actually look into her hull regeneration numbers on the current live patch? Something is horribly wrong here.

The damage she deals is fine and everything (my Helios with it's relatively puny Shields managed it just fine with some rotation of the arcs on my part) - scales perfectly fine with difficulty - but her Hull regeneration is over the top.

Please acknowledge that myself (and many other players) are actually having a problem here. When the DLC was first released, one of the first players to get their hands on the Perun admitted to having to mod the game in order to achieve the damage needed.

Don't sweep it under the "It's supposed to be a challenge"-rug. Please.

[76561198156207256]

Please don't tunnel vision-read my posts... :'(

The first sentence in this post

http://steamcommunity.com/app/419480/discussions/0/1368380934242999324/?ctp=2#c1368380934246183202

mentions that there will be hard nerfs on the bounties hull regeneration coming literally today, along with other decent tips on how and what to do to increase DPS.

[Burusagi]

Originally posted by Maximus:

Please don't tunnel vision-read my posts... :'(

The first sentence in this post

http://steamcommunity.com/app/419480/discussions/0/1368380934242999324/?ctp=2#c1368380934246183202

mentions that there will be hard nerfs on the bounties hull regeneration coming literally today, along with other decent tips on how and what to do to increase DPS.

Wait... am I reading you correctly in that post on that 'Expose' is just meant to do damage to enemy Shields, rather than apply a "buff" to the damage recieved to enemy ships? O_o

[Bottom of the Well]

Well thanks everyone for the info think yous sold me on wanting to get it now. I like the idea of a super tough boss... I love having to try and win.

[WWDragon]

Sounds like a lot of people agree with me about the randomness sucking.
I'm surprised so many of you got to that rediculously overpowered end boss, at all.

[Avenger93]

Originally posted by WWDragon:

Sounds like a lot of people agree with me about the randomness sucking.
I'm surprised so many of you got to that rediculously overpowered end boss, at all.

Oh the randomness sucks big time.

Its part of why this doesn't feel like bounty hunting at all. That and the ridiculous levels of firepower needed to actualy take down the boss.

[Burusagi]

Eh, the randomness doesn't bug me nearly as much as the last boss. I just use the waypoint system and set up a zig-zag pattern across the region involved and go watch TV with my laptop in, well, my lap.

The Bridge Officer is kind enough to give me an audio que when the lackeys show up and stuff.