So, i decided to write a little recap of the tournament from my point of view. I'll talk about the how and why of my fleet-building, which will also be a good occasion to give some feedback about the faction i used, PACK.
Round 1.
The tournament start with a battle against High-tech. For some reasons, i was convinced Thaago's starter fleet would have been a squad of 10 tac-lasers Hecates, probably one of the strongest early tournament fleet possible to assemble. Going for a run-of-the-mill fleet against such an adversary wasn't an option. Fortunately, i had some other ways to handle that challenge.
At only 5.500 credits, the Samoyed combat freighter is possibly one of the cheapest ships available. It's also fast and surprisingly well armed. The Samoyed weren't a match for Hecates in duels, but i would outnumber them 15 to 10.
I went for a mix of Swarmers/LAC/Tacs and Salamanders/LAG/Tacs. Due to the limited ressources imposed by the tournament, i didn't expected to meet heavily armored foes for at least two rounds, which is why i picked Swarmers over Harpoons. More ammo, good anti-fighter (just in case) and good enough HE for now. The Salamanders on the other hand, were useful to make the enemy AI panic, forcing my opponents to turn their shields away and leave themselves vulnerable to Tac lasers and Swarmers.
Thaago didn't went for the 10 Hecates like i expected, instead going for a pair of Medusa and 3 Hecates, making things easier for me. The corvettes went down without troubles, and the destroyers's narrow shield arcs couldn't protect them from the projectiles coming from every sides. Death by a thousand cuts. Also some unexpected, but entertaining, ramming action from my Samoyed.
Round 2.
Swarmbot and his mid-tech fleet was my next competitor. While his Hammerheads performed reasonably well against Mendonca's high-tech fleet, i wasn't too worried about this match. I expected Swarmbot to either double his Hammerhead fleet to eight destroyers, or add something else, like an Eagle.
I added four Samoyed for the second round, all armed with Needlers/Harpoons and Tacs. Yeah, i know i said Swarmers were good enough for now, but given an enemy cruiser was a possibility, i felt some beefier HE was required... It's not like Harpoons are a bad choice anyway.
I realized i would also need some proper shield bursting ships. The Komondor, priced at a very reasonable 18.000 credits, was an obvious choice. A distant sibling of the Hammerhead, the Komondor performed a similar role as its vanilla counterpart, but arguably better. A quad needler loadout, coupled with Accelerated Ammo Feeder would allow me to break through any shields. A pair of Harpoons racks would further enhance my fleet ability to delete overloaded targets. As for the Proximity charge launcher, i found it to be a surprisingly good weapon. Lot of ammunition, very decent HE damage, amazing anti-missile, and not bad against fighters either. The AI also really dislikes lowering its shield with those floating around, leaving them vulnerable to an overload against my needlers.
But really, i mainly added those because i was already planning for a way to deal with Cycerin's ion torpedoes for the next match. Which of course, didn't went quite as planned...
Round 3.
Aura's victory against Cycerin's pirates was unexpected, i wasn't really sure of what i would be expecting for this third round. It's only after several testing run against the Shadowyard fleet that i understood why Cycerin lost.
The SRA fleet most importants elements were the two Charybdis battlecarriers, as well as the two Raksashas bombers. Of course, there were other ships, but they were mainly cannon-fodder standing between my fleet and the two carriers cruisers. I quickly realized that the AI was unable to prioritize the important targets, instead focusing intensely on fighters and drones, which Aura had plenty of, leaving his carriers relatively unnoticed to my fleet. Not only that, the Charybdis were tough beasts to take down. Big, expensive cruisers with powerful shields, armament, and an endless supply of extremely distracting drones. Watching the AI focus such an inordinate amount of efforts to take down those drones despite being specifically outfitted to take down the source was probably the most infuriating experience i had in this tournament.
The Raksashas weren't easier to deal with. Tough, mobile (thanks to their phase skimmer, allowing them to run back quickly to their carrier) and reliable. The dual guided Tusks their carried were extremely efficient at reaching their targets, and could be fired from a relatively safe range.
Aura's main strategy was to stall the battle for as long as possible, throwing and endless stream of quickly reloaded bombers against his opponent, grinding him down through attrition. There was no fair fighting possible against that fleet, i had to gamble, just like Cycerin did, and give my fleet the mean to burst down those Charybdis as quickly as possible, and hope the AI would sufficiently ignore the fighters/drones.
Fortunately for me, my P.charge Komondor were quite able to intercept the constant barrage of torpedoes. Not well enough to survive a long battle, but hopefully enough to give the rest of my fleet the time to strike down the carriers. But to strike down the big ones, i had to hire some proper killers. I needed burst damage, reliable enough to always reach their targets, powerful enough to break through shields and armor. Borgrel's Archer fleet was quite inspiring for this one. I decided to join the Sabot cult.
Two medium missile mounts were the main reason i decided to add the Ridgeback destroyer to my fleet. They had some other very interesting qualities too, the main one was their damper field, making them pretty much invulnerable during the active system duration, very handy when the enemy team is going to fire a lot of torpedoes. I went for Shield Bypass, as i expected them to survive longer relying only on their Damper Field (overloading was a death sentence at this point). While it worked very well to stop missiles, the AI wasn't very reactive to beams, and the Charybdis HIL proved quite annoying in this battle.
Battles against carrier fleets tends to ends up being a diceroll, entirely dependent on the AI ability to choose the proper target. Seems like i was luckier than Cycerin, my fleet managed to defeat the green armada. That Shadowyard fleet was in my opinion, by far the most dangerous opponent in the whole tournament. I'm glad i managed to eliminate Aura in a 3-0 victory, for he would have definitely been able to come back from the tiebreaker and take his revenge on me (and probably everyone else) with his carrier deathball.
Round 4.
After beating the final boss of the blue bracket. It was time for me to face Abyz and his Dassault-Mikoyan fleet. This round had one particularity over the previous ones, i could retire my round 1 fleet (15 Samoyeds) to get something else instead, which i definitely did since i was already locked by the 25 ships limit.
I went with five more Ridgebacks and seven more Komondors destroyers, giving my fleet absolutely overwhelming kinetic firepower, and still more than enough Harpoons to burst through the sturdiest amours. I also still had a huge number advantage over my opponents despite having retired 15 of my frigates.
Given the nature of my fleet, fighting "fair" against me would be like jumping head first into the meatgrinder. I expected Abyz to retire his own round 1 vessels and bring in some carriers. A DME fighter fleet wouldn't be half as terrifying as a Shadowyard one, but would still be his best shot to beat me. On top of that, Abyz would later have to fight Borgrel, which combat doctrine was fairly similar to mine and shared that vulnerability to fighters. Once again, i was readying myself for another "dice roll" encounter.
Unexpectedly however, Abyz decided to fight "fair".
...
Oh well, onward to round 5 i guess.
Round 5.
Borgrel's mid-tech Sabot fleet was the next in the line. I expected him to keep specialising in a purely offensive fleet to the end, but his previous fight against Carroy showed he knew better. Borgrel probably knew going all on offensive wouldn't work any more, not on Carroy, and certainly not on me, and his fleet change reflected that.
Those Centurions were able to soak an incredible amount of damage, and would distract many missiles from his vulnerable Archers, the only real source of damage he had. Still, he probably knew he wouldn't win a DPS race as my defensive abilities were greater than his (damper field, P.charge). I expected him to try to outlast me in an endurance battle by adding a bunch of cruisers. Probably his best option, but i was ready to counter it.
The three Mastiffs cruisers i added would greatly help my fleet in those endurance battles. A bit expensive at 58.000, but i was running out of ships slots anyway. As for the loadouts, i admit i was already preparing for my next battle against Carroy, the HIL/Tacs/Swarmers/P.charges were ideals to handle his shieldless ships and numerous wanzers.
My battle against mid-tech went more or less as expected, my Mastiffs were able to stand toe to toe with the Vultures to the end. I still got surprised by the Flare burst launchers he added, those managed to noticeably reduce the efficiency of my missiles against him, not quite enough though. I'm not sure what Borgrel could have done more in this one, his Tornadoes Archers from the previous round weren't adapted as my fleet was perfectly equipped to deal with his missiles, and the Vultures lacked the punch to offset that weakness. Perhaps Eagles would have been better for this round.
Round 6.
Carroy's Diable Avionics would be my final opponent. This is another special round where i, as well as Carroy, could retire our ships from round 2 (my 4 Samoyeds and 3 Komondors). Unfortunately for me, there wasn't much more customization possible for my fleet, Carroy would easily be able to predict my next ships and plan accordingly.
The DA fleet was a tricky beast that countered most of my tactics. The unshielded ships meant my Ridgebacks would be more shy about firing their sabots, and even if they did, Carroy's monstrous point defense array made his ships nearly immune to missiles. Worse, his numerous fighters meant my ships wouldn't be able to properly focus the real dangers as long as the wanzers are around. This didn't left me much choices, i needed some reliable HE damage that isn't from missiles, that could take down fighters and go through capital grade armor.
I considered going for a Bulldog for a moment. I thought about making it a Tactical laser boat to deal with the wanzers, plus a pair of frontal Hellbores to deal with the bigger ships. It wouldn't have been a bad idea, but i wasn't ready to pay 220.000 credits for a "light battlecruiser". It would also be extremely vulnerable to missiles, and Diable had plenty of those. The Haze artillery cruisers in particular, was a huge threat since its SRABs "ballistic" missiles were very difficult to intercept, and it was very possible that Carroy added a few more of those.
As lame as it sounds, i went for the safe route and added four more Mastiffs to the fleet. All very good at dealing with the Diable fleet as well as protecting themselves from missiles, also the only thing that could beat a Haze in a "starring contest".
Carroy knew i would add more HE beams to my fleet, and probably planned for that. So i was also fairly certain from my side that the next ships he'll add will be shielded. What i didn't expected however, is that they'll be Gust carriers. With the benefit of hindsight, that made the most sense. Those can resupply wanzers, have a heavy build-in gun that can go past my heavy PD, a potent shield emitter, and also have goddamn drones. I still think a second Malestorm battleship would have been better for him, more vulnerable to beams, sure, but much more likely to burst down my cruisers, the only important targets in this battle.
I knew this would be an endurance battle, and while i was ready for it, the presence of fighters still added that dreaded dice-roll factor. I had to destroy every single ones of them to ensure i could properly engage the cruisers and capital ships.
I met my first defeat in the first encounter, bad deployment from my side, the Ridgebacks deployed too far behind, unable to quickly dispatch his "scout" ships. Unfortunately for me, those shielded scout ships proved to be incredibly annoying distraction to my cruisers, and bought enough time for the Diable fleet to grind down my ships one by one. The next few battles went better, my destroyers, which were nothing but cannon-fodder in this situation, managed to distract the attention of the big ones, winning time for my Mastiffs to clear the wanzer cloud, leaving the Diable flagships vulnerable.
The final ended with 3-1 score. I broke my no-loss streak, but eh, not bad considering the tough opponent i faced.
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So, what can we learn from this tournament? Sabots were clearly the stars of the show, being flashy and brutal, and the "NERF SABOTS" slogan was heard quite a few times. So, OP or not? I'd argue that the tournament is not the campaign, and while Sabots proved incredibly devastating here, i don't think they're quite as absurd in a "normal" game. The reasons Sabots were extremely strong was in part due to the tournament's budgeting. The limited funds restricted the participants in investing in smaller, less armoured ships for half of the rounds, and lightly armoured ships tends to be very vulnerable to high kinetic bursts.
Also, each rounds were fought against an "equal" opponent, and trying to take down as many enemies as possible from the get go is a legit strategy to gain the number advantage. In campaign, things might not be as "fair", a player might end up being massively outnumbered, and those tactics might not works as well. And just like i said above, heavily armoured ships are more common in the campaign, and much more resilient to Sabots (as my final round against Carroy can attest).
Lastly, there's no such a thing as Archers, Ridgebacks and other cheap missile boats in vanilla (asides from the vigilance), limiting the viability of this strategy.
Still, it's obvious that Sabots have issues in their core mechanics. They're not here to create an "opportunity" in the battle, they're just offering a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" choice, either massively raising the target's hard-flux, either drilling a hole in armor. Which is... A bit boring in my opinion? Perhaps even frustrating when it's the player on the receiving end (right Abyz?). I personally liked the idea of the old sabots MIRVs, powerful against shield, worthless against armor. They were still pretty bad, and i think it was due to their low ammo count, only three attempts to create an "opportunity" isn't very reliable.
The AI behaviour to Proximity charges launchers gave me some ideas considering the Sabot. The AI would rarely drop its shield in proximity to the slow, HE charges. Would it refuse to raise it when near slow, kinetic ones? Now that would make a much better opportunity seeker weapon, especially if it have sufficient ammo to be used throughout the battle. Regardless, i'm curious to hear about people's opinion about the Sabot, now that we've seen it in all its glory in this tournament.
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As for PACK... Well, as i said before, the tournament isn't the campaign, and i'm not sure the faction is as OP as it has recently been suggested. I think the main reason i managed to get this far with PACK was the number advantage, i massively outnumbered everyone from the first round, quickly reaching the 25 ship cap halfway through the tournament, and substantially upgraded to bigger hulls whenever possible. Strength in number is a big thing, as Cycerin, Norgo and i proved in the early rounds. Of course, this wouldn't have happened if the Samoyed was reasonably priced, but stats wise, i think PACK is (mostly) fine, if a bit stronger than average.
I would probably need to do a PACK campaign to properly identify the worst outliers, but i already know that PACK ships tends to be underpriced when it comes to the deployment cost, not that it mattered in the tournament. I also noted that their vessels tends to have on average pretty spectacular flux stats, but very weak hull integrity to compensate. I won't make general assumptions for the specific stats to nerf, as it's something better done on a ship to ship basis. If i have to say something about one ship in particular, it'll be the Ridgeback (and its X variant). Damper field is too much of a troll system to be allowed on a destroyer, even with the oncoming 0.8 nerf, i think another defensive based system would be more fair.
Well, that was quite a lengthy opinion. Any other thoughts about this tournament?
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Topic: Starsector 2nd Fleet Building Tournament FINISHED (Read 54018 times)