Inconsistent ship line numbers.

[Mayheim]

One of the things I still don't understand is why the number of ships in ship lines you find sometimes wildly differ.
Combined with techs slightly increasing the caps of ship lines you already have it makes me uncertain whenever or not I need to worry about claiming as many flagships and hacking as many ARS as I can before upgrading techs or not.

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott Park)]

It's just part of the procedural generation; not all fleets are created equal.

The base ship count in a line is something that is constant no matter what (it's rolled at the start of the game), and any improvements to them from techs or tech doublings or whatever are applied on top of that.

So you can get techs very early on in and it won't affect things in any negative way. You'll get the same bonus as having done it later.

The ONE partial exception to that is doing the doubling of a ship line via that new hack. It doubles the base ship line amount, and some lines are better than others. So if you choose a worse ship line to double, it will be slightly less optimal than choosing a better one later on.

It's generally not enough of a difference to be worth the stress, but that's the one exception to the general "order of operations doesn't matter" rule of thumb.

[Mayheim]

Not a big deal but it would be less confusing if those numbers updated while they are still on the unclaimed/unhacked flagship or ARS.

Thanks for clearing that up.

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott Park)]

We've been generally fixing those things up as we can; if you see specific instances where it's not updated still, please do let us know. For instance, the flagships and ARS are supposed to still have the updated numbers and mark levels now... but it's always possible we missed something.

[Mayheim]

It has updated mark levels but if I hack something like Mk7 Tritium Sniper Frigate from a ARS it will show x1 ships on the station but add x3 ships to the flagship.

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott Park)]

If you have a savegame where it hasn't been hacked yet and it's going to let us duplicate that behavior, that would be much appreciated if you could send it our way: https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/

Thanks!

[Mayheim]

Now that I'm trying to reproduce it, it seems to be working correctly. I will keep an eye open for it in the future thought.

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott Park)]

Okay, that's good to know. We may have fixed that in the prior build, actually, so that might be why it seems ok now. It was definitely off at some point in the recent past.

[Mayheim]

I noticed it still shows the wrong numbers for ship amounts in detail view (C + click).

[Vyn]

I am playing on 1.007 right now, and the C-menu for any unclaimed units (GCA/ARS/Fleets) will show the correct stats, but the quantity will be stuck at Mk1. A similar problem exists for the grant ship line hack submenu where one is supposed to select a desired ship line. Here the color of the ship line is correct, but the quantity is stuck at Mk1 too.

[Polylog]

Actually I'd like to have the information of how many MKI equivalents I'm getting. Sure, it is usually better to get the higher MK type, but sometimes I'm wondering which one is better after I invest into tech. So I'd be nice to know which ship line has more baseline ships in a hack.

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by Polylog:

Actually I'd like to have the information of how many MKI equivalents I'm getting. Sure, it is usually better to get the higher MK type, but sometimes I'm wondering which one is better after I invest into tech. So I'd be nice to know which ship line has more baseline ships in a hack.

Personally, I feel that's the wrong way to look at it. Science is finite, and you're not going to be able to spend enough to rank all your ships up to mkVII.

Instead you should look at what's available and pick a selection of weapons and hulls that you can exploit well. Usually about 3 I hear is good on Diff 10. More as the difficulty drops. All your mkI ships will get upgraded when you get around to upgrading hulls of other ships that are mkV.

E.g. in my diff 7 game, I'm investing in 2 weapon techs to mkIII, and 3 to mkV. The 3 are fusion, melee, and generalist, and the other 2 going to mkIII are concussion and splash. I'm not ranking up any other weapon unless I get to my goal with extra science to spare. As such, I look in ARSs for ships that fit my needs. I've taken more of the saws that give you metal back, vampire claws, parasitic fusion bombers, Ion Disrupters, and Muggers. I took these not because of the high ship caps, but because they're more beneficial to my build.

I've also skipped a few fleets that didn't fit with my setup as well, and in my current fleets, of all the ships I have, only spiders are mkI.

Be smart about your tech and you'll go farther.