Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Megas]

The biggest problem I have with Heavy Blaster is flux use and short range.  The heavy mounts are already big flux hogs (especially Mjolnir or Storm Needler) unless I use stuff like Hellbore, Devastator, or Mark IX, especially if I want to use both broadsides at the same time.  Heavy Blasters is both a flux and OP sink that Conquest cannot afford very well.  I do not deny Heavy Blaster can be effective, but Conquest does not need it, and probably has better options.

Option: hey, you aren't a capital!

Locust spam!  (If Conquest has Expanded Missile Rack for lots of missiles.)

Or move into position so that both broadsides are firing and multiple targets die at the same time.

Or just snipe and kill the thing from long range because you can, and no need to move to its range.

[Thaago]

It may be because I have flaks in the mediums, but the variant I just made for the tournament - so no loadout design or flux boosters - can fire a Mjolnir, Gauss, and heavy blaster all at the same time and stay nearly flux neutral. It could also do Storm Needler, heavy blaster, and Mjolnir. Using both broadsides at the same time however; yeah, that won't work with this. I don't find that situation coming up that often, though. (It might just be how I/the AI fly it.)

[Plantissue]

When designing a ship loadout, ideally, you want the "main" guns to all converge on the same range, so you have the best opportunity to maximise dps at a sweetspot. The only time you don't want this to happen is awkward weapon type and layout that would naturally prevent this or if flux/second is too much/too low.

[Blothorn]

That isn't necessarily true, especially for capitals--even an unusually mobile capital like the Conquest is outpaced by many cruisers, and going full either long or short range can mean trouble with faster ships with different range preferences.

[Thaago]

When designing a ship loadout, ideally, you want the "main" guns to all converge on the same range, so you have the best opportunity to maximise dps at a sweetspot. The only time you don't want this to happen is awkward weapon type and layout that would naturally prevent this or if flux/second is too much/too low.

I also disagree with this - its often much more important to have the right guns to deal with a wide variety of situations, rather than just matching range bands. One example of this is in designing Hammerheads: you can build a 1HVD, 1Mauler, 4 tac laser support variant that does really well kiting larger, slower ships and supporting a fleet. But that variant will struggle a lot against anything faster that can close the range, as its DPS is terrible. Mixing the long range support guns with a few shorter ranged, higher dps guns (like a railgun + lag or dual railguns) does make it a slightly worse kiter, but vastly improves how it deals with getting rushed by frigates.

And also with capital ships, it is often beneficial to get close while you can, so that a faster enemy can't get out of range when they start to get high flux. So with a Conquest, you don't really want to kite cruisers/destroyers at max range: you want to get in close so that when they run, you can still maul them.

[Schwartz]

Conquest feels difficult to play. The best layouts routinely leave 2 medium missles or 2 medium energy empty or do an assymetrical layout with one cheap side. There's many points of failure with flux spikes, difficult shields and thin armor.

I would not dare put Mjolnirs on this ship. For me it's pretty much always HAGs, Mark IXs and HVDs because their flux requirements are relatively modest. I have not used Conquest much in 0.9 because it felt like it required a lot of skill not to die in it. Maybe it deserves another look.

[Megas]

I usually leave both medium missile and energy mounts empty, and if I do not have homing large missiles, the large missiles are also left empty.  I may skimp more on weapons if I want Expanded Missile Racks for lots of Locusts or to offset penalties from (D)s, like Augmented Engines to Degraded Engines.

Mjolnirs are fine if they are the only significant weapons on their side.  Firing two broadsides with flux hogs is a pain.  That said, I do not use Mjolnirs much in 0.9 because Mark IX and HAG/Devastator are good enough against current dominant endgame threats, Pirates and Pathers.

The only thing Conquest really needs for capital-grade durability is either Hardened Shields or a ton of capacitors.

[intrinsic_parity]

Heavy blaster is quite bad on the conquest imo. It has more than enough mounts to saturate its flux dissipation with damage that is more efficient vs armor and shields. If I want more armor penetration, there are two medium mounts for a mauler, or I can mount HAG or mjolnirs or hellbore. Vs shields, pretty much any kinetic is way better.

IMO, the heavy blaster provides 2 things, a way to dump lots of flux into a decent amount of damage, and fairly good armor penetration. The conquest has access to much better sources of both of these things.

Mjonlir is definitely viable on conquest with max dissipation and hardened shields. I've actually started using them in the place of HAG on some loadouts. They have very similar flux cost, so its trading a bit of armor pen for a bit of shield pressure. Mark IX and mjolnir is a pretty decent combo. Probably with a mauler for extra armor penetration in most situations. That's similarly effective to mark IX, HAG and a medium kinetic probably. To be fair, it doesn't really justify it's increased rarity all that well, but it's fun and at least on par with other weapons in appropriate loadouts.

[Megas]

Agreed that Mjolnir is good, and if the primary endgame enemy was major factions, either deserters or otherwise, I probably would default to two Mjolnirs on one or both sides.  (My 0.8 loadout had Mauler and Gauss on one side for anti-Paragon and the other side had two Mjolnirs for general purpose.)  Currently, Mjolnir is overkill against pirates and pathers.

[Plantissue]

That isn't necessarily true, especially for capitals--even an unusually mobile capital like the Conquest is outpaced by many cruisers, and going full either long or short range can mean trouble with faster ships with different range preferences.

There's not that many base cruisers which actually outspeed the Conquest.

When designing a ship loadout, ideally, you want the "main" guns to all converge on the same range, so you have the best opportunity to maximise dps at a sweetspot. The only time you don't want this to happen is awkward weapon type and layout that would naturally prevent this or if flux/second is too much/too low.

I also disagree with this - its often much more important to have the right guns to deal with a wide variety of situations, rather than just matching range bands. One example of this is in designing Hammerheads: you can build a 1HVD, 1Mauler, 4 tac laser support variant that does really well kiting larger, slower ships and supporting a fleet. But that variant will struggle a lot against anything faster that can close the range, as its DPS is terrible. Mixing the long range support guns with a few shorter ranged, higher dps guns (like a railgun + lag or dual railguns) does make it a slightly worse kiter, but vastly improves how it deals with getting rushed by frigates.

And also with capital ships, it is often beneficial to get close while you can, so that a faster enemy can't get out of range when they start to get high flux. So with a Conquest, you don't really want to kite cruisers/destroyers at max range: you want to get in close so that when they run, you can still maul them.

Some of that may be true, but for example, with the conquest and it's flux capacity, the range disparity between a typical large ballistic and a medium energy usually means that the medium energy too often goes unused, whilst the large ballistics and medium ballistics are more than capable with dealing with cruisers and destroyers.

In the case of the Hammerhead, I count the main guns as the 2 medium ballistic mounts , though I suppose the two turreted frontal small mounts can be counted as well, in which case you just simply decided that all main guns should have as large a range as possible.

[Lucky33]

Impact Mitigation I is not fixed yet. Grab it, some over protective skills, grab Solar Shielding, Heavy Armor, Advanced Optics and beam point defence. Now you are borderline invulnerable to anything that doesnt have full set of the offensive combat skills.

[Goumindong]

I am a firm believer that the front medium energies should be heavy blasters. It gives the ship a lot more close range punch, and also makes it a credible threat to cruisers/destroyers from the front. It also lets you use flak in the medium ballistics but retain high firepower.

I don't disagree, but i love an ion beam and also really like using all of the missile slots. Not that 2 HB's are ever bad on anything.

As an aside, and in support of heavy blasters, do note that the inefficient shields and large total capacitor make flux dumping particularly good on the Conquest.

But you should never be close range with it. In fact you should never even have to deploy your shield to make the best possible use of it. Have an Onslaught in your fleet with a reckless or aggressive officer as well as the armour skills to do the tanking.

Having range disparity between your weapons allows you to utilize your speed advantages in order to target discriminate effectively.

The biggest problem I have with Heavy Blaster is flux use and short range. 

The Heavy Blaster does not have high flux usage though its range is not long.

Heavy Blaster flux usage is 720 for 12 OP and 500 DPS. Mjolnir is 533 for 667 and 24(14 with conquest bonus) OP
 
VS armor HB has a 25% penetration advantage

Compared to a conquest fit Mjolnir the HB (assuming 2 extra vents) is at 1.4 and the Mjolnir is at 1.25. Pretty close. Against 1000 armor the mjolnir is at 4.37 and the HB is at 4.19. The HB is slightly better. 

Like the Mjolnir you don't ever waste flux into shields and you don't ever waste flux into hull. So the HB compares very favorably on total flux/damage per OP spent.

[Megas]

720 flux per second from Heavy Blaster is a lot.  Combined with two 400+ or 500+ flux-per-second heavy ballistics, Conquest would need to vent soon after firing for about a couple seconds, especially if both broadsides are firing.  Something like two Mjolnir or Gauss, with some occasional fire from Maulers or Flak from the mediums, is about as much as Conquest can comfortably sustain.

I would like to use Ion Beam for shield penetration, and its flux use is less than Heavy Blaster, but still too much if I have flux intensive ballistics on the sides.

[Retry]

The Heavy Blaster definitely has high flux usage.  720 flux/s is the flux usage by definition, and it's higher than ballistic mediums and almost every energy medium except for Ion Blaster (under burst conditions), as well as every single ballistic large weapon + most large energy weapons (Only beat out by Plasma Cannon, and the Autopulse Laser under burst conditions).  Basically no frigates can comfortably wield one, DDs struggle with them, and only some Cruisers and above can manage operating them sustainably.

What you're comparing is flux-to-damage ratio, or flux efficiency.  In this case the Blaster is 12% worse than Mjolnir with that metric at armor=0, and Mjolnir is about 4.3% worse than Blaster at 1000 Armor.

I do not think giving the Conquest 2 free vents for using the Heavy Blaster vs a Mjolnir is a good assumption.  Who doesn't max out, or nearly max out, their flux vents on capitals?  That's basically a given on my Caps, and often I attach the hullmod that further increases flux venting.  In practice that 2 OP isn't going to go to flux vents, but flux capacitors or a weapon upgrade somewhere on the ship, or perhaps upgrading a hullmod to a slightly more expensive one.

So using the base 720 flux the flux-to-damage ratio of the Heavy Blaster becomes 1.44 (15.2% worse than Mjolnir) at 0 armor and 4.31 at 1000 armor (Basically a ~1% difference in favor of the Blaster).

Also, the Mjolnir is one of the less efficient large weapons in terms of flux-to-damage ratio, but that's because it also has an EMP component.

I do like the Heavy Blaster, especially on higher-end ships with plenty of flux dissipation.  But that weapon's basically the poster-child of flux inefficiency.

[Thaago]

I agree that it is inefficient, but the Conquest has a lot of flux to spare. Also, consider its use situations:

1) Enemy in front of Conquest. This mainly happens when the AI is piloting, but can happen with agile ships vs a player. In this case 2 HB is 1440 fps - easily enough to be covered by the Conquest. In this situation the other guns aren't firing (enemy in front), so... well the Heavy Blaster is the only choice. It gives much more DPS than any other option.

2) Enemy in Broadside and within 600*1.6 range. In this case the Conquest either is mauling something to death OR wants the thing to go away as fast as possible. In either case, what is most needed is DPS. I will admit that 2x Large Ballistics + 2 offensive mediums + 1 HB overfluxes the Conquest (by a small amount). However, if you put flak in the medium ballistics (which a lot of people do) then the flux is not overtaxed: the Conquest can handle 2x Large Ballistics + 1 HB even without skills.

So, even though the HB is a flux hog, the Conquest can handle it and it adds significant capabilities.