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[CapnHector]

Hello,

I would like to hear your suggestions and experiences about the best way to kill [REDACTED].

There comes a certain point in the game where alpha cores are the only resource that you care about anymore. Then it is time to head to the high danger level systems. I have a colony next to a red beacon system and I like to go there to farm [REDACTED]. It gets repetitive and I am a busy galactic autocrat. I want to have ships that I can give to the AI officers, that can take on several Ordos at once, without significant losses, repeatedly. This is the only ship design that I have found that fits this task:

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I found this design after pitting different Paragon designs with high level officers against overwhelming forces in the simulator so they get completely surrounded by cruisers with Onslaught support. This design specifically did better than anything else, including quadruple plasma cannon, double plasma cannon and tach lance variants. I can pit two or three (with increased battle size) of these piloted by high level officers against up to three Ordos without player control and they will win with no losses. However, if there are more Ordos, or more Radiants than there are Paragons, risks significant ship losses, so there is room for improvement. (Incidentally they can also take out anything else in the game by themselves under AI control)

If more Ordos or Radiants appear, I will personally pilot one of these, my main playership:

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Onslaught being useful for its higher mobility, or the sniper ship:

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with the absolute deadliest combination being one player-piloted sniper paragon behind the lines killing the high-priority targets while high level officers tank in one or several of the brawler paragons above.

What are your best strategies for dealing with the [REDACTED] menace?

[Wyvern]

That's a very similar overall strategy to what I used for remnant-hunting in vanilla.

I found it useful to crank battle size to the max, and back my primary paragons with a large secondary fleet, to ensure that I'd have enough deployment points to field four paragons at once; set two of them to escort the other two so none of them ever end up entirely on their own, and just sit back and let them go.  (Does often require taking manual control of one paragon at the end of the fight, though, when there's a remnant battleship backed up against the map edge and the AI just isn't aggressive enough to take it out there.)

I also found that the power of a remnant battleship varies widely with its loadout & officer.  At the one end, you can end up fighting one with five large PD mounts that's just no threat at all.  At the other, five autopulse lasers plus four harpoon pods plus all the attack-boosting officer skills = you're almost certainly going to lose one of your paragons.

[Igncom1]

I know little about fighting the stations but the fleets have the same weakness as all high tech ships.

An over-reliance on shields and energy weapons with little in the way of armour.

You don't really need HE to cut them down once their shields are gone and if you have overloaded or EMP'd them they are sitting ducks anyway.

Mass high powered kinetics is my game plan for fighting them, pop them like balloons with Hypervelocity Driver's then just mash them to death when they can't fight back with their pathetic armour.

[Wyvern]

I know little about fighting the stations but the fleets have the same weakness as all high tech ships.

An over-reliance on shields and energy weapons with little in the way of armour.

I'll just note here: the remnant battleship has almost as much armor as an Onslaught; your proposed tactic may not work as well against them as you'd like.  It should be good for farming medium danger systems, though, as those tend not to have battleships in their fleets.

[Igncom1]

I know little about fighting the stations but the fleets have the same weakness as all high tech ships.

An over-reliance on shields and energy weapons with little in the way of armour.

I'll just note here: the remnant battleship has almost as much armor as an Onslaught; your proposed tactic may not work as well against them as you'd like.  It should be good for farming medium danger systems, though, as those tend not to have battleships in their fleets.

That.... is fair as I haven't done that in a while and the last time I fought a redacted BB was with a random fleet of salvaged midlines with bomber support.

So you have me on that one. My only counter to that would be longbow bombers. EMP wave after EMP wave to make the BB overload as the fleet batters away at it. Or you know just chuck a single torpedo bomber in there, that should do the trick.

[Goumindong]

I know little about fighting the stations but the fleets have the same weakness as all high tech ships.

An over-reliance on shields and energy weapons with little in the way of armour.

You don't really need HE to cut them down once their shields are gone and if you have overloaded or EMP'd them they are sitting ducks anyway.

Mass high powered kinetics is my game plan for fighting them, pop them like balloons with Hypervelocity Driver's then just mash them to death when they can't fight back with their pathetic armour.

Without a lot of range (cruisers, largely limited to energy weapons) and little in the way of mobility...

Storm Needlers are very good against them. You will want some HE to get through armor as SN's are very weak here but if you want to overload a shield SN's are top dog in damage and efficiency.

[CapnHector]

But which ballistic-mounting ship will you use?

The main problem with these fleets is that you get absolutely swarmed. Remnant ships are fast, and Brilliants are surprisingly tough with decent armor, too. There is also an issue that the AI focuses on Brilliants when Scintillas and Fulgents should be absolutely top priority to kill due to their strike power. No other ship that I've found other than the Brawler Paragon can survive getting swarmed in a high alert level system. Onslaughts burn drive themselves out of position and die to attacks to their rear. (Caveat: I haven't tried mass Onslaughts, but singles in mixed fleets did poorly in AI hands)

Well, mass Dooms did survive, but they didn't kill fast enough and ran out of CR.

[Goumindong]

Conquests are your best bet. With 1200 native dissipation and two sets of converging large ballistics plus missiles for finishers they're pretty good at chewing through things with low armor and high shields.

I like the Odyssey as a player ship better for this situation though.

[Plantissue]

I find that anything works; there's no need for any special load outs or ships.

[dskips]

I'm certainly having trouble with them, I've been trying to assault the Red Planet and so far I've had no success,
Their fleet is ~40 ships, one battleship, 10 carriers, 8 cruisers...


1st Attempt: Paragon, 2 Odyssey, Apogee and player Aurora.
Admittedly this was a bit hopeful but we got smashed, probably only killed half a dozen of the 40 or so ships they deployed.

2nd Attempt: 2x Paragon, 2x Odyssey, 2x Eagle, 2x Dominator, a few Scarabs and a new player Aurora.
Survived a bit longer but killed less than half the fleet. It wasn't really all that close.

3rd Attempt: 1x Paragon, 1x Legion, 2x Conquest, 2x Mora + me in yet another Aurora.
Killed 11 of the 34 deployed ships, this was a wash, I had no real chance of winning. My Level 20 officers don't have any carrier skills so maybe it wasn't really worth trying that.

4th Attempt: 1x Legion (after upskilling an Officer) 2x Conquest, 1x Odyssey, 1x player Paragon
I'd hoped I was wearing them down but they're back up to 39 ships and this fleet only killed 8.

Any suggestions?
I have infinite money (two 600k/month colonies) but no blueprints for Conquests (or Doom, Harbinger, Medusa) and frustratingly no Tachyon Lance. I've done quite a bit of looking but I could do some more. I have 6 level 20 officers (1 now carrier specialised).
I can't deploy fleets bigger... do I just build a fleet equal to those 4 put together and attack in waves? The later ships won't have officers and will suck?

At a loss

[Igncom1]

My red planet had a BB with about 4 escorts of destroyer size and smaller.

How much does that thing scale anyway?

[CapnHector]

Try my suggested loadout for Brawler Paragons from the first post and send out only those with high level officers. These are made to survive getting swarmed while piloted by AI. No other ships, they just get swarmed and die and give remnants deployment advantage. If you cannot pilot a sniper paragon, piloting a Brawler Paragon is fine. The idea is to build charges behind fortress shield then unleash lethal barrages. Fleet preferably full of these capitals.

I routinely take out larger forces (several Ordos at once) with these without losses. AI really does better with those than tach lance paragons anyway, I have tested this. It is better at using flux and fortress shield with these. Tach lance version tends to die when swarmed in close combat in AI hands.

[intrinsic_parity]

AI piloted odyssey is definitely not a good choice. Aurora probably doesn't do enough because missiles are limited and it otherwise doesn't punch hard enough to deal with the redacted cruisers (Aurora is my favorite ship to pilot, but that's the reality).
I would say pilot either a paragon with auto pulse/plasma (tach lance if you ever get it) or a conquest probably with a storm needler and HAG/mjolnir on the primary side . On the back size probably like devastator/mark IX and flak. Storm needler is really good for dealing with the strong shields. You also probably want onslaughts and dominators to tank damage, with heavy armor if you have it. I would recommend lots of kinetics on those and annihilators in the missile slots. Mark IX and storm needler again are very important. Try to put dual flaks in mediums to deal with the fighters. Moras are a good choice and use lots of fighters/interceptors rather than bombers. Claw, broadsword, warthog, spark. Maybe if you have a legion and a fighter speced officer, throw a longbow and some bombers, but I feel like the role of the fighters in this case is more to counter the enemy fighters and keep your warships safe than to deal lots of damage. Distracting the small ships is also very valuable to reduce focus fire. Focus on deploying ships that can survive a lot of punishment (mora dominator onslaught paragon).

[dskips]

Thanks, particularly to intrinsic_parity I built a new fleet consisting of

1x Player Paragon, 1x Legion, 2x Conquest, 3x Dominators and 8x Mora.

Everything loaded up with as many kinetic weapons as possible, Storm Needlers, Heavy Needlers, Dual Flack etc, even a good number of Sabots & Squalls.
The mora didn't have officers but I figured that even if they died quickly more fighters on the field would be good and they're cheap to deploy. The all had Claws, Broadswords or Wasps.

I got a bit lucky when the AI didn't deploy it's battleship right away, it only turned up mid battle which meant not having to deal with it surrounded by quite so many friends.

In the end I only lost a Conquest (got a bit close to the battleship by itself) and 3 Mora.

Thanks all, it was crazy to see how differently the battle went adjusting the ships a bit and totally rethinking the weaponry.

[intrinsic_parity]

Glad I could help

Kinetics are great, turns out the game is much easier when your enemies are maxed out on flux all the time. Still need HE, but my attitude is trying to get just enough HE and the rest kinetics. Vs. weaker shielded enemies, HE tends to be significantly better (particularly vs pathers) so always try to build for the enemies you are planning to fight. Bombers are also a lot better in other fights, but the remnant tend to deploy tons of sparks that basically negate all bombers.