Halcyon Update

[Redrover1760]

About the PR

adds some more actual defensive turrets, adds a few blast doors. A few defensive exterior balistic turrets for the civilian dock, removes some unnecessary crossfire exterior turrets, removes the laser turrets outside of the civilian dock

adds some heavy ballistic turrets in the chokepoints, one per each hallway after the civilian area and military docks

adds one heavy balistic turret outside of CIC, adds some blast doors to allow them to be disabled for prisoner transport I guess

fixed missing directional holofan by the prison solars/upper cargo

Why / Balance

PDV boarding Halcyon is way too easy and fast. You don't really feel the home defense advantage cause people can just board Halcyon with ease and win even if their ships are destroyed.

Even with this change though, PDV still more turrets, so this mostly just balances things out.

How to test

Media

Requirements

• I have read and am following the Pull Request and Changelog Guidelines.
• I have added media to this PR or it does not require an ingame showcase.
• I can confirm this PR contains no AI-generated content, and did not use any AI-generated content.

Breaking changes

Changelog

🆑

• tweak: Halcyon given more turrets and turrets are upgraded to heavy balistic.

[Arcticular1]

Instant issues with this.

All outside turrets are heavy ballistic. Helios has none outside.
Armament for Halcyon has not changed and is still more powerful than Helios by quite a bit.

Turrets inside civilian areas or around them should not be used. Helios has none on their civilian areas, and halcyon should not also.

No more than 1 turret should be able to fire at a single turret at a time, if this happens on Helios please point out where.

The main issue i have with this PR is that it improves it's internal defenses without nerfing it's external defenses. If you wish for them to have the same strengths, make sure they have the same weaknesses. A perfect example of this is while PDV Helios also has an AI it has critical weaknesses such as the AI not being able to see outside as well as it is not protected by a single turret, where it can be taken out as an Airlock.

Please do not make this Helios but better in every aspect.

[Arcticular1]

May i add that TSFMC has access to deployable sentries that at which can not be EMPED and placed anywhere. Giving them an equal amount of turrets and defenses does not mean equality due to their equipment.

[Czuat]

Helios has 2 heavy ballistic turrets in the middle docking exterior in civ docks. the issue i feel on the halcyon is that PDV can take it over too quickly compared to helios raid, if they dock civ area, the laser turrets do nothing because of eshields and its just two doors away from getting to the most important area on halcyon which is the middle area, if you control it the tsf have a hard time dealing with it as its impossible to flank unless you go to space. It is true that tsf can get turrets but they are not exactly cheap and they require setting up which i feel like shouldn't be a need to fortify halcyon every round against boarding just to feel safe, and if you expect for tsf to do that every round you should also expect pdv getting a china lake which easily clears turrets and anyone trying to defend halcyon. Heavy ballistic turrets are overkill because they one shot anything even if they would be easy to deal with in space from range. Blast doors are a good idea but i feel there should be more and also buttons for existing ones should be added as they are placed in the awkward spots, also most of cameras are unnamed so you cannot effectively use them, though i wished we ported the new camera ui that wizden has for that. I just feel like halcyon is hard to defend compared to helios as in helios you can always retreat to the safety of turrets and take flanking positions while tsf has nothing saving them inside unless they focus on bunkering down in halcyon which even then, halcyons interior just sucks.

[Czuat]

Actually now that im playing, helios has heavy ballistic turrets everywhere inside

[BluCottonCandy]

Actually now that im playing, helios has heavy ballistic turrets everywhere inside

Correct, because Helios outside guns are weaker.
TSF base guns outside are strong, and with this PR their inside guns are strong.

That is the issue.
You can either have strong defenses vs ships or ground units, not both.

Helios has 2 heavy ballistic turrets in the middle docking exterior in civ docks. the issue i feel on the halcyon is that PDV can take it over too quickly compared to helios raid, if they dock civ area, the laser turrets do nothing because of eshields and its just two doors away from getting to the most important area on halcyon which is the middle area, if you control it the tsf have a hard time dealing with it as its impossible to flank unless you go to space. It is true that tsf can get turrets but they are not exactly cheap and they require setting up which i feel like shouldn't be a need to fortify halcyon every round against boarding just to feel safe, and if you expect for tsf to do that every round you should also expect pdv getting a china lake which easily clears turrets and anyone trying to defend halcyon. Heavy ballistic turrets are overkill because they one shot anything even if they would be easy to deal with in space from range. Blast doors are a good idea but i feel there should be more and also buttons for existing ones should be added as they are placed in the awkward spots, also most of cameras are unnamed so you cannot effectively use them, though i wished we ported the new camera ui that wizden has for that. I just feel like halcyon is hard to defend compared to helios as in helios you can always retreat to the safety of turrets and take flanking positions while tsf has nothing saving them inside unless they focus on bunkering down in halcyon which even then, halcyons interior just sucks.

Firstly, Eshields are almost never used by PDV when boarding, and the civilian area is impossible to get to most times because TSF fill it entirely with nano foam.

TSF base feels hard to defend inside because it's built that way.
Halc has superior defenses for shuttles trying to dock, less defences inside.

Helios has good defenses inside, and worse outside defenses.
That is by design, this PR is aiming to make TSF both good at outward and inward defense, which is a real issue.

There is a reason why after every raid that the PDV win, they have to buy a TSF shuttle, because all of their got atomized, whereas TSF raiding Helios and winning, can just leave on their own shuttle usually.

As well, TSF can easily just rush forward, and dock, whereas trying that against TSF is nearly impossible unless you use a large shuttle, that will be again atomized near instant.

[Czuat]

From my experience every pdv carries eshields in their back pack in case something goes wrong. Halcyon guns are better but they are still outranged by charons and can be stripped by jupiter which will be used to tank most of the fire while charons snipe the vulnerable gunnery server.

You can easily stealth board halcyon with nothing but hardsuit, fire extinguisher and access disruptor and easily get to halcyon gunnery with ease under a minute, as such if pdv uses this tactic instead of using ships or using deception tactics such as docking as civs ships they win most of the time i feel like.

like i feel that its halcyon getting raided 90% of the time not helios, but maybe thats just my experience because when i play tsf, im always outnumbered in ground combat anyways.

Also i dont see much reason why we cant make faction bases equal or maybe even flip the balance? like does halcyon need better guns when it has more powerful fleet? does helios need better defenses when they already have good ground equipment?

I feel like that would make for better experience for both sides

[OneZerooo0]

External turrets should stay the same
I agree with Arctic’s review

[Arcticular1]

Also i dont see much reason why we cant make faction bases equal or maybe even flip the balance? like does halcyon need better guns when it has more powerful fleet? does helios need better defenses when they already have good ground equipment?

I feel like that would make for better experience for both sides

You ask for equality but fail to see the equality I have set for the review.

helios has good internal defenses with “okay” external defenses.
Halcyon is the opposite.

I’m stating to red if they want to add anti boarder defenses then they should reduce ship fighting defenses.

halcyon has a much larger and robust amount of weaponry, a prime example of this is that they have infinite EMPs, while Helios does not.

We do not want faction bases to be invincible. The most desired outcome for this PR is for them to require protection from supporting ships while being decently hard to FULLY capture.

[Czuat]

My point was that not only TSF has weak ground side BUT also weak internal defenses, the PDV has the opposite, which makes it not really equal because it sways too much in both ways because tsf can not only glass PDV ships with halc but also use their powerful fleet to deter them, on the otherside tsf can easily board but are also easily repelled by superior defenses and better weapons, it just leans too much into one side in my mind.

the best equality in my mind would be halcyon with worse guns but better internal defenses and helios flipped so pdv have a better chance with their ships and dont have to resort to boarding to be viable, the same would be for tsf ships not having to glass helios first but having equal chances for both boarding and ship sieging.

[OneZerooo0]

Please argue about balance in discord

[freturt]

helios has good internal defenses with “okay” external defenses. Halcyon is the opposite.

there are literally 2 blind spots with low amount of guns on halcyon,TSF's defenses are not THAT good,literally random europa can just tank 2-3 shots from dymera and then board halcyon.
And imho yeah,halcyon not having heavy ballistic turrets is a huge problem.
Idk why yall are even mentioning that''Faction X has better external defenses,meanwhile Faction X is more prepared for boarding''
Like,it doesnt really matter in case of ship battles,because if PDV's want to destroy halcyon with ships,they will do that anyways,they can use Jupiter,sultan,sainties and then proceed to board Halcyon,if PDV wants it,they will do it.Same with Helios,if TSF wants to destroy helios in a space battle(that never happens btw),they most likely will come prepared for this with few Flyssa's and/or Polaris instead of rushing it with 3 andromedas just because someone said that PDV has''worse'' station guns.(yet still,3 hydras+bofors for one side is serious shit).

But this wont work same with CQC's/boardings,heavy ballistic turrets is an obvious and serious advantage.
For example,Faction base's gunner for some reason didnt saw that enemy's vessel has docked to faction's base:
In case of PDV:
Turrets would leak TSF's position or AT LEAST pdv would hear emp's sound,the helios itself is bigger and that would let pdv to get a time to break into vizier's room to use theirs equipment and/or coordinate themselves to fight against invaders.
In case of TSF:
PDV just goes blitzkrieg strategy and kills everyone since there are no blastdoors and heavy turrets that would slow enemy's movement.
Yes,tsf can buy turrets,but they can be easily disarmed by pressing alt+click on them(hello meth+eshield+speedlegs+speedboots[opt]+cv-32)/chinalake supremacy.You can spend 10 minutes to get like 300 DC by doing bounties as PDV to get a weapon that obviously deals way more damage than emp emitter(I am mentioning that since inf amount of emps was used as an argument),meanwhile TSF has to fly around sector to do counter smuggling,since most of shit is not even a contra in game.

It's not like I'm trying to protect TSF(tho I have 320 hours as Fireteam Leader,lmao)heavy ballistic turrets outside of faction base is a pure shit,but I've played for both factions a lot and the difference for me is obvious in case of portstrike,PDV is just more prepared for this.

[Redrover1760]

changelog: External heavy balistics removed, heavy balistics internalized and put in chokepoints, etc

Yes,tsf can buy turrets,but they can be easily disarmed by pressing alt+click on them(hello meth+eshield+speedlegs+speedboots[opt]+cv-32)/chinalake supremacy.You can spend 10 minutes to get like 300 DC by doing bounties as PDV to get a weapon that obviously deals way more damage than emp emitter(I am mentioning that since inf amount of emps was used as an argument),meanwhile TSF has to fly around sector to do counter smuggling,since most of shit is not even a contra in game.

lol funny

[freturt]

All outside turrets are heavy ballistic. Helios has none outside

No more than 1 turret should be able to fire at a single turret at a time, if this happens on Helios please point out where.

btw

[Arcticular1]

All outside turrets are heavy ballistic. Helios has none outside
No more than 1 turret should be able to fire at a single turret at a time, if this happens on Helios please point out where.

btw

Clarified in private discussion.
Heavy turrets are provided in those locations due to being a civilian catch net and bunker.

[Arcticular1]

Turret in civilian area should be removed.

Turrets should get some sort of custom decal / tile under them so they stand out and dont look strange (example - do whatever).

[burrrkeye]

yo what the lobter

[Arcticular1]

to better clarify what i mean - look at flyssa

[Redrover1760]

ok fixed

[Arcticular1]

Seems like goidafail