The NEW Sucellus (4.30)

[donzi]

I've always liked the Canteran ships for various reasons.

During the campaign, fighting the xenon in Maelstrom, I witnessed some stuff with my Sucellus during the siege in Cryptic Heart that surprised me but I basically figured it was a fluke of 'run away' and collision even though that explanation really didn't apply so well.

Just a little while ago I saw again some great stuff from this ship while OOS.

Apparently the Sucellus has been buffed with more aggressive attitude.

The first sight in cryptic heart was seeing the ship boost in spurts like the little ships and the skunk can do. It shot away from me, not too far, but apparently to get into range of the it's target (I had prob set them to attack all enemy..), somewhat stunned I gave it an order to withdraw from battle since I knew there was the I and a K over there.

So I just dismissed it pretty much and set it to patrol etc not paying much attention to it.

However the latest sight (the OOS) map view I was watching, I see this think chasing down one of the reiver styrvok B&L. It boosted I'd say 3-4 times chasing that ship around the zone and finally destroying it!

The ship was simply assigned to the defense officer of one of my stations along with the plot Taranis. I have never seen the Taranis do any such moves, so either something is 'wrong' or the ship has been buffed.

now maybe it's not exactly 4.30 'new' -- I don't think that I've played any versions between ~3.5x and 4.30 as my notes are last dated ~mid 2015

Anyhow, if you're firing up XR again after a long break like me or just have not bothered to try the Sucellus lately it might be worth the hassle of using the DHA BTO and build at least one of them to play around with.

..as usual, this is all vanilla XR 4.30 for the time being.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

The combat logic for ships with forward-mounted weapons (IHC on Succelus and missiles on Balor) was improved a lot in v4.10

The same patch also started DOs targeting surface elements.

https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=347278

[donzi]

Ah! Thank you for the pointer!

I skimmed that, eyes kind of blurred over though I guess -- tons of stuff since ~3.5x since I last played.

I get the impression that some enemy are also targeting surface elements now too.

Playing 4.30 has been pleasing.

I still can't be silent when I am waiting for the game to trigger NPC exclamations that allow me to smalltalk. Thank goodness for paranid jewelry!

[ajime]

Ah! Thank you for the pointer!

I skimmed that, eyes kind of blurred over though I guess -- tons of stuff since ~3.5x since I last played.

I get the impression that some enemy are also targeting surface elements now too.

Playing 4.30 has been pleasing.

I still can't be silent when I am waiting for the game to trigger NPC exclamations that allow me to smalltalk. Thank goodness for paranid jewelry!

keep succellus fully stocked with vcrushers and watch the fireworks as it starts to disarm enemies in cqc, assuming their engines are disabled that is

[donzi]

I've had another Sucellus built and hope to take it out and re|visit some places with it soon!

CQC, not quite sure what that refers to off hand, but I will be interested to have it team up with me on a some boarding experiments and eliminating for a time the threat of the pirate booze factory in OL.EC that is messing up my route to ratfish waters.

I guess it's the 'forward mounted guns' bit of the buff that explains why I've not seen the Taranis boost around too.

[ajime]

close quarter combat-cqc is where your it gets to point blank range with all guns blazing. sometime even unintentional ram.

[donzi]

Ah! Very nice. I like to dogfight and early rep restoring for PMC at the badlands was a lot of fun with the Sucellus and Taranis in tow when the K's began to show up.

[Walton Simons]

Sucellus is definitely improved, sometimes it still goes near a K and gets blasted but about 70% of time now it stays at distance and uses that beautiful IHC(this is with 5 star crew).

Balor is still crap though, doesn't keep distance at all and gets in cqc keeps boosting around but still in cqc. If I get two missile rounds of it before ordering it to fly from battle I'm lucky. Would have been nice if they implemented Sucellus "stay at distance" behaviour.

[j.harshaw]

Thanks for that. Been waiting for news of the Balor. It should use the same logic as the Sucellus. Will take a look when there's time, although that might be not be for quite a while. Glad to hear that the logic works with the Sucellus more often than not.

Question: does your Balor also have a good crew?

[Walton Simons]

Yup, all my crews in combat ops have 5 stars (engineer, def officer, captain).
I did some more tests last night, I managed to split a poor K from his pack to test Balor and Sucellus.

There are two situations, if the enemy has the engines disabled both ships act better, Sucellus behaves the best with the current AI tweaks. If the K didn't had it's engines destroyed then it's a mess, each ship trying to outmaneuver each other, Sucellus never managing to position itself to use the IHC and K being more agile.

First vid is with the K having the engines intact and the fight is a mess:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baeTHQq3BBc

K with engines destroyed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqVzDj_Kb7A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ma5xY60HcE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmPRRKg5xtc

I noticed the boosting from Balor comes randomly or when taking fire while Sucellus stays on it's position most of the time.
This isn't about them taking serious fire, they simply decided to boost randomly.
In Test 3 Sucellus had a good position but after taking some fire and still had about 50-60% of shield decided to go into dumb mode and boost near K.

At one point Balor had a perfect distance between it and K and used the missiles but decided to boost around.
Another factor of Balor getting into cqc (Test 2) in one of the vids might be that when I ordered to engage it boosted from another sector and it choose a flight path that ended near K.

Have to say Sucellus looks badass when it gets into position for IHC.

Another thing I noticed is that they never leave combat, they don't jump when heavily damaged, they don't fly away otherwise I have to order them multiple times just to fly from battle (nope,my crew ain't Split).
Perhaps 5 star morale on def officer or captain affects this.
Only one time (in first vid) I saw my Balor jumping after taking some very small damage.

[j.harshaw]

Huh. Thanks for taking the time to do those videos.

[Warnoise]

It is crazy how a properly working AI can make a difference in Xrebirth. The few times where the AI works properly (fighters and drones focusing surface elements, ships turrets focusing surface elements, balor/sucellus fighting properly, etc..) I am having the blast of my life. But unfortunately those moments are rare, most of the time the AI starts derping with fighters bumping into capital ships going full kamikaze, balor/sucellus not working properly, turrets not focusing on surface elements....

5 years and still not properly fixed....cmon.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

turrets not focusing on surface elements....

I hadn't experienced this myself and I don't remember a previous report (might have forgotten one by now!).

Please could you share a save game where this happening with a player-owned capital ship.

Please also list the crew skill levels for the their 3 primary skills.

[ajime]

turrets not focusing on surface elements....

afaik they do focus on surface elements, its just that ships evasive action making it miss more and more. you will see a higher percentage of hits if the ships are slower or head on. Smash the engines and see the disabled ship loses its turrets rapidly.