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Author Topic: What unusual strategies have you found success with?  (Read 13540 times)

Shad

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Re: What unusual strategies have you found success with?
« Reply #30 on: January 13, 2019, 12:48:52 PM »

  • All your combat ships must have a weapon mount capable of fitting a medium missile
  • All your combat ships must fit pilum launchers in any mount that can accomodate them
Can you stand the crushing disappointment of sub-optimal play long enough to achieve critical mass?

Pilums/Pila did nothing wrong!

I really stopped using the SO and torp loadouts and have lately been focusing on regen missile builds (TBH, I think all missiles, should have reloading, since anything else encourages minmax cheese). Thankfully mods add many more regen missiles from DA's micromissiles to Sylphon's Exalts to Tempars' Clarents (miss those as Templar's are still 0.8 )

So yeah, with a full missile fleet, you feel like Xerxes, blotting out the sun with all you missiles. And watch fleets which thought they had good PD get obliterated.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2019, 02:19:19 PM by Shad »
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Megas

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Re: What unusual strategies have you found success with?
« Reply #31 on: January 13, 2019, 01:49:21 PM »

@ Null Ganymede:
I do not know what point when critical mass is reached.  In older versions, Pilums spam wrecked fleets.  Today, not so much, at least not without lots of missile spec officers.  I do not know if officers will get the job done, but without them, I could not get the critical mass of bygone releases.

Just did a quick Pilum test, with three Dominators and five Falcon (P).  Things I noticed...

Fleet as a whole needs to be built for Pilum spam.

At first, there are indeed clouds of Pilums, as all ships fire missiles, but it does not last for long.  There may be too many to shoot down, but it does not matter if pilums are slow enough that enemy outruns them or blocks them.

Against a roughly equal sized enemy force or bigger, Pilum spam is mostly ineffective.  It works better against fleets smaller than player's.

Without ECCM, Pilums are simply too slow.  There may be too many to shoot down all of them, but the enemy has no trouble shooting some of them down and blocking or simply running away from the rest (they are already cowardly enough, don't want them to run away even more!)  Pilums hardly scored any kills against enemy fleet.  They did overwhelm singular targets like a lone battleship (but at that point, bring in lone Harbinger and torpedo it).  ECCM helps a bit.
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Null Ganymede

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Re: What unusual strategies have you found success with?
« Reply #32 on: January 13, 2019, 06:38:28 PM »

ECCM and officers on the Pilum ships are underwhelming because Pilums are still slow. Try them on Salamanders, they get *way* harder to shoot down.

Try swapping the 5 Falcons for 3 Moras and 3 Wolves. Same point cost, but you now have slippery frigates that can carry Salamanders or draw attention on the flanks as needed. Broadswords and Claws on the Moras will increase Pilum hits. Most importantly your battle line is now ~3 cruisers wide, but 2 cruisers deep. This concentrates firepower even if you now gotta watch the flanks closely.

Edit: I tried this a bit, and didn't like Pilum dominators enough. The hull shines in an assault role and Pilums are too back-line. Typhoon Reaper launchers improve TTK too much to replace. Dropping a Dominator for more frigates and destroyers with Salamanders improves the fleet. Replacing ships with Condors reaches peak Salamander spam, but Condors aren't "cool". :)
« Last Edit: January 13, 2019, 08:20:50 PM by Null Ganymede »
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SafariJohn

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Re: What unusual strategies have you found success with?
« Reply #33 on: January 14, 2019, 06:48:50 AM »

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Euphytose

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Re: What unusual strategies have you found success with?
« Reply #34 on: January 14, 2019, 07:11:39 AM »

I don't think speed is the issue. Actually I'm more leaning towards keeping them as slow as they are, but giving them a massive health pool. Basically a brick wall that you have to dodge. Or that will distract PDs for some time.

Or maybe switch them to Kinetic, since right now you can just soak them up with shields, even with ships like a Sunder who has bad shield efficiency.

And I also think that the skill that boosts damage done to missiles and fighters by 50% is overtuned, but maybe it's just me.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2019, 07:14:27 AM by Euphytose »
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Megas

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Re: What unusual strategies have you found success with?
« Reply #35 on: January 14, 2019, 07:24:33 AM »

Pilums had high health until recent releases.  Now, they are so slow and flimsy that even Mining Lasers can shoot them down.  Alex rebalanced Pilums by lowering OP cost from 10 to 7.  Like pre-0.8 Thumper, no weapon is better than Pilums.  High health Pilums meant either you used ships with flak or you shield tank them.  Beams would be underpowered.

I used the ships I did because they were at hand for a quick test.  I just reconfigured them from simple assault (e.g., Falcon (P)s were built for Annihilator spam) to Pilum spam.  I had no frigates (aside from Tempest and some civilians) because I deem them obsolete at endgame due to lack of peak performance.
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SafariJohn

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Re: What unusual strategies have you found success with?
« Reply #36 on: January 14, 2019, 12:58:42 PM »

I don't think speed is the issue.

Pilums are broken (which is not the same as OP). They are broken because they can snowball into an invincible ball of death. Instead of addressing this problem, Alex has simply nerfed them into uselessness.

Zibywan (the guy who came up with the stats I packaged into that mod) solved this by giving Pilums terrible maneuverability. The Pilums can't help but spread out (helped along by high speed), making it impossible for them to clump up. No snowball of doom means Pilums can then be balanced normally.
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Torch

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Re: What unusual strategies have you found success with?
« Reply #37 on: January 15, 2019, 07:18:32 AM »

I've taken Serenitis' tactics to heart and started a combo space hobo/auto-loading missile run (with rebalanced pilums of course), and it's surprisingly effective! My Venture flagship can throw out a significant amount of missiles in a very short time, and while I only have a few ships with the proper missile mounts, I can already tell that achieving 'critical mass' isn't too far off.
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