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[Goumindong]

Which one is that?  Plasma cannons?  High Intensity Lasers?  (I used HILs for anti-pirate in 0.9a, though I would use plasma cannons if I needed to fight capitals.)

Generally Plasma Cannons plus 1 or 2 xyphos plus all of the dissipation and capacity and hardened shields and RFC.

You can also run HIL/Tac Laser but its not as effective in player hands.

[Megas]

@ Goumindong:  If I wanted to use HILs, I would not use Tactical Lasers because Odyssey has no way to put hard flux by itself.  I would use IR Pulse Lasers.  In the last release, the only endgame enemies that mattered were small ship wimp spam from pirates (and pathers) because only pirates and pathers could ignore colony defenses to do bad things to them.  Everyone else (aside from Remnants) were stopped cold by your factions' patrols, and you made enough money that bounties could be ignored if inconvenient (and there were fires everywhere).  IR Pulse Lasers and HILs cut through smaller pirates with no or weak shields fast.

Today, with capital spam, more rewarding Remnant farms, and broken Pathers, I doubt I would use HIL Odyssey today (as much).

[Goumindong]

HIL/Tac Laser Odyssey has enough soft flux to outflux the majority of targets that arent large (and some that are). I definitely prefer the Plasma version. If you fit IR Pulse then youre range limited in hard flux to a range where, if an enemy were in that range, you would prefer to fit Plasma Cannons. And your soft flux gen is super limited outside of that range so you might as well have PC

[TaLaR]

HIL/Tac Laser Odyssey has enough soft flux to outflux the majority of targets that arent large (and some that are). I definitely prefer the Plasma version. If you fit IR Pulse then youre range limited in hard flux to a range where, if an enemy were in that range, you would prefer to fit Plasma Cannons. And your soft flux gen is super limited outside of that range so you might as well have PC

Just firing 2 tac lasers is not worth losing zero flux bonus, and against most targets they have negative flux performance (you spend more on shooting than enemy on shielding - not worth it unless you actually get enough to overwhelm, and Apogee doesn't).
I'd rather take a bit armor damage and close distance quickly as worst case.

[Megas]

If you fit IR Pulse then youre range limited in hard flux to a range where, if an enemy were in that range, you would prefer to fit Plasma Cannons. And your soft flux gen is super limited outside of that range so you might as well have PC

I do not always need to be in that range.  Against unshielded or weak frigates, and there were many, they die at long range.  Against moderately shielded ship like Falcon (P) or Venture that can absorb beams for a while, get in close, let the IR Pulse Lasers build up flux, then finish off with HILs.  Odyssey has the mobility to chase wimps it can outmuscle, and there were a lot of wimps in 0.9a.

I tried plasma cannons, but they were a pain to hit smaller targets that the pirates abused back in 0.9a.

I forgot to mention the IR Pulse Lasers had IPDAI.  IPDAI IR Pulse Laser is good multi-purpose.  Good stopping power against missiles (despite inaccuracy), and decent hard-flux or damage with so many IRs Odyssey can mount.  IPDAI Tactical Laser is too finnicky, does not always fire when I need it, even with all of the required hullmods.

IR Pulse Laser and HIL loadout was optimized against pirates, which was fine when the factions that used those fleets were the only ones who breached colony defenses.  Big ships that could threaten Odyssey were never a concern when my patrols kill all expeditions, and I made enough money to ignore named bounties.

But it does not matter anymore.  Pirates no longer wimp spam.  Instead, they Atlas 2 spam.  Now I probably want something else, like Paragon to pierce shields with quad lances and good shields to block wide-spread MIRV volleys.  (Conquest often gets clipped by MIRVs because shield does not extend far enough to always block all MIRVs without maneuverability bonuses.)

[Thaago]

Onslaughts are tricky to load out because of their dissipation, but are incredibly powerful when done right. They use high tier weapon extremely well because those weapons tend to be more efficient. Railguns or Heavy Needlers are A+, or a single front Storm Needler (not all those options at once - its too much flux and kinetic, but some combination gets the job done). Using 4 Annihilator Pods is also key, unless they are specifically being built for another purpose, because they give more than enough flux free HE damage to take on heavy targets.

Its also important to fly them correctly. The TPC are great long ranged siege guns or overall pressure weapons, but are NOT shield killers. When I'm flying an Onslaught, I want to burn into kinetics range with the TPCs off, and the target off the port or starboard bow where the ship can overlap 2 large mounts and many smaller ones (and all 4 missiles). Once the enemy flux has been pushed high, I turn off my kinetics, swing the nose around, and unleash the TPCs. Faster enemies will still get wrecked because of the extreme range or TPCs. Just as important as weapon group management is vent management - the ship has enough armor to take minor hits, so doing half full quick venting that eliminates the threat of torpedo strikes while venting is a good idea.

AI piloted Onslaughts suffer somewhat from their own long range: they can blow their flux budget on a kiting enemy, and the ballistics travel slow enough to be dodged at so far away. An officer with a shot speed boosting skill and accuracy booster is essential. The AI is acceptable, but not that good, at flux management, which lowers the Onslaught's power by quite a bit.

[Thaago]

Back on topic:

I find the Wolf to be flat out underpowered now that pirates are using shielded ships and fighters. Its worth having in an early game fleet simply as a numbers filler and to lure the enemy away, and to at least damage the unshielded hounds and cerberi. It is completely obsolete against anything with shields, at best providing some flanking and missiles, at worse blocking shots. Its offense is so bad that it is mostly useless as a player ship.

There are no weapon options that let a Wolf effectively damage shields, because it does not have enough dissipation to fire its single medium gun, let alone doubling up with a front IR pulse: it has poor sustained DPS. It only has the single medium mount (and front small), and no booster system, so its only option for burst damage are Heavy Blaster or Anti-Matter Blaster: poor efficiency weapons. So its burst potential is low. With poor sustained damage and poor burst damage, the Wolf simply has a weak weapons package. In practice it can barely break the shields of the Kite, a 2 OP civilian shuttle, before its own shields are defeated by its front gun and the single dual AC on many variants! The ship can be a decent flanker because it can carry an Ion Cannon, and the Pulse Laser can deal decent armor damage against small (frigate and light destroyer) level threats: hounds and cerberi are its ideal targets.

The Wolf is very vulnerable to interceptors due to its fixed forward shields, fixed forward main gun, and weapon choices. The ship needs at least two beam PD to have a chance of dealing with Salamanders or other missile threats. But these low DPS weapons need stacking numbers to start really dealing with fighters: 2 or 3 is not enough to deal with 2 Talon wings (and forget about Sparks - they melt and destroy Wolves with impunity). Having an Ion Cannon in the front small makes the Wolf a decent flanker, but also means that its anti-fighter DPS is below the effective hull regeneration due to replacement of fighters: it CANNOT kill fighter wings fast enough to live. Add in the Wolf's paper armor (150) which makes the frag and/or light kinetics of fighters a real threat, and the ship is simply doomed.

The Phase Skimmer is a great system that keeps Wolves alive a decent amount of the time, but without offense its a half ship at best. Because its such a core part of the identity of the ship, I don't think replacing it with High Energy Focus is a good idea. Instead, the Wolf needs sustained DPS, or at least better recovery after a burst: more flux.

100 more base flux, bringing it up to 250, would be a decent start. Yes, this brings it higher than the Tempest, but Tempests have an offense boosting system on top of the Terminator drone, so effectively are still much much better. At 250 base flux and 10 vents, a Wolf still cannot fire the basic Pulse Laser and have shields up and be flux neutral. But at least its close. An SO Wolf wouldn't be able to fire a Heavy Blaster, but at least it would be closer than present.


Conversely, I think Shrikes are actually good as light Destroyers, designed to fly at burn 10 in a frigate pack or serve as more powerful frigates in battle! With 550 flux (when vents are high) it can actually support energy weapons: a heavy blaster works! Medium missile mounts are always powerful as well. This opinion is based heavily on me having bought one when I had very few other options, then being absolutely astonished at how well the AI flew and performed in it (routinely getting better than 100% in damage done in Sundog's battle ranking metric). Cheap, effective, damages the enemy, and an OK level of survivability. I did notice them become obsolete before my other destroyers, but thats ok: they are super-heavy frigates, not true destroyers, and by the time they became obsolete I wasn't using any non-specialty frigates at all.

[Megas]

@ Thaago:  Agreed on Onslaught.  I end up outfitting Onslaughts much like Legion, and I favor Hellbores and Heavy Needlers on the latter.  For Onslaught, Heavy Needler spam for kinetics (more range than one Storm Needler).  Heavy mounts may get Hellbore or Devastators.  Or I may put Devastators on the side heavies (because AI focuses on TPCs and rarely tilts the ship to use two heavies) and something good like Mjolnir in the medium.  Deep mediums get Maulers.  Smalls get Vulcans or get left empty.

As for Annihilators on Onslaught, that is only good if the fight is short enough.  Against long multi-capital fight that are common at endgame, the Annihilators are spent much too quickly, and Onslaught might as well be without missiles (and 40+ OP) after about a minute of fighting.  I probably need Expanded Missile Racks, but I find I cannot afford that if I need Augmented Engines to keep campaign speed up.  For AI use, I am beginning to like Typhoon Reapers because they are not spent so quickly.  AI will use them sparingly.  Effectiveness probably depends on skills.  If I cannot rely on Reapers, then I mount few Salamanders and use extra OP to buff other stuff more.  In previous versions, Annihilators were no-brainers, but today, fights are too big for Annihilators to be effective enough for long.

For Wolf, if I have burst lasers and want to use hard flux medium, I often leave the small middle mount empty and use one pulse laser or heavy blaster.  Wolf really needs better stats.  I would also welcome the omni shield it used to have when the game was Starfarer.  It takes some practice to get used to it, but omni shield is really nice on Wolf.

Shrike can use heavy blaster, although if I use the (P) version, I like one light autocannon.  (Would like railgun, but it is too OP starved to afford it, and 700 range does not matter much when bound by 600 range heavy blaster.)

Shrike, at least the pirate version, is good because it is cheap, and you get what you pay for.  Only about 25k compared to about 50k or so for a real destroyer.

Speaking of Heavy Blaster, I do not use two heavy blasters on Medusa because it dumps flux too fast.  I tend to use one Heavy Blaster and one Ion Beam, or two Phase Lances with Advanced Optics.  I tend to favor the Heavy Blaster and Ion Beam combo due to costing less OP (or rather, I can get max vents, but I cannot with two Phase Lances plus Advanced Optics).

[TaLaR]

I find the Wolf to be flat out underpowered now that pirates are using shielded ships and fighters. Its worth having in an early game fleet simply as a numbers filler and to lure the enemy away, and to at least damage the unshielded hounds and cerberi. It is completely obsolete against anything with shields, at best providing some flanking and missiles, at worse blocking shots. Its offense is so bad that it is mostly useless as a player ship.
...
The Phase Skimmer is a great system that keeps Wolves alive a decent amount of the time, but without offense its a half ship at best. Because its such a core part of the identity of the ship, I don't think replacing it with High Energy Focus is a good idea. Instead, the Wolf needs sustained DPS, or at least better recovery after a burst: more flux.

You do need to dump several times worth of your flux capacity to kill anything, but Wolf s maneuverable enough for fast close range venting. Well, I do agree that moving stuff down with a melee Lasher is faster and more straightforward against ships that don't have overwhelming burst to counter you.

Phase skim is not just defense. It wins flux war by avoiding flux-expensive shots and allowing you to vent mid-fight. Triple skim allows to easily reach back of any rear-vulnerable ship and destroy it without giving a proper chance to fight back. Also allows to catch phase ships. And Wolf can even bypass omni-shields via point blank skim to defeat Medusa which is otherwise 100% impervious to Wolf.

I'm not against buffing it somewhat though. It IS severely lacking in brute force department. Killing simple shielded kite takes depressingly long.

[Serenitis]

I would also welcome the omni shield it used to have when the game was Starfarer.  It takes some practice to get used to it, but omni shield is really nice on Wolf.

Omni shields on ships that need to be flown using turn-to-pointer can often be a huge hassle even when you are familiar with the behaviour.
Not really ideal on what is essentially a starter ship.

Giving the Wolf a wider shield arc would be helpful. Along with the abovementioned flux stats.

[SCC]

Speaking of giving ships omni shields, giving the Brawler one wouldn't hurt. If it needs a buff, that would be a change that would help with its bigger issue, besides the fact that a destroyer-fighting frigate isn't particularly useful at any point.

[TaLaR]

Omni shields on ships that need to be flown using turn-to-pointer can often be a huge hassle even when you are familiar with the behaviour.
Not really ideal on what is essentially a starter ship.

Giving the Wolf a wider shield arc would be helpful. Along with the abovementioned flux stats.

Easy to use at basic capacity, hard to master - I see nothing wrong with applying this concept to Wolf. Omni shield was more flexible, since it allowed to deal with Salamanders for cheap by just turning shields. With fixed shield, skimmer became the only option for last moment avoidance, and it's charges are important resource needed for many other purposes.

[Megas]

Omni shields on ships that need to be flown using turn-to-pointer can often be a huge hassle even when you are familiar with the behaviour.
Not really ideal on what is essentially a starter ship.

Giving the Wolf a wider shield arc would be helpful. Along with the abovementioned flux stats.

Easy to use at basic capacity, hard to master - I see nothing wrong with applying this concept to Wolf. Omni shield was more flexible, since it allowed to deal with Salamanders for cheap by just turning shields. With fixed shield, skimmer became the only option for last moment avoidance, and it's charges are important resource needed for many other purposes.

I used omni shielded Wolf much during the Starfarer days to defend against Salamanders.  With omni shields, small mounts can be Tactical Lasers or even non-PD.  With Front Shield, it practically needs the small mounts for PD (except maybe burst PD on sides and whatever in the middle), and rely solely on medium weapon to kill things.

Turn-to-pointer?  I use keyboard for all movement (which I guess is called tank controls).  I use mouse for panning the cam and controlling omni-shield.  The dexterity required to pilot something like Wolf with omni shield cannot be any worse than many games, especially early FPS games like Doom.

240 front shields was not bad on Wolf, and I hoped Wolf would get that after the conversion, but it did not.  Since then, I always wanted to get omni shields back on Wolf.  (Not through hullmod since that guts arc and OP total, which Wolf barely has enough with LD3, especially after ITU costs more for frigates.)

Also, AI used omni-shield very well on Wolf, blocking missiles among other things.

Medusa primarily points forward too, especially if relying on railguns to break shields.

Omni shields on Brawler would help defend against Salamanders since Damper Field seems incapable of blocking EMP.

[Thaago]

I wouldn't mind Wolf having omni back at all: that would be a very welcome extra defense against salamanders and fighters.

Its true that it is harder to coordinate the mouse position than fixed forward, but other small maneuverable ships (Tempest, Medusa, Kite, probably a few others) have it and it works just fine. (:grabs cane: and baaack in myyy daaayy we piloted our wolves with omni shields, and the mouse hadn't been invented yet! And get off my lawn! :shakes cane:)

[xenoargh]

On the Wolf:  it's a classic exemplar for my arguments re: Hard Flux on Beams.  The problem here was that a lot of the Pirate junk was totally ruined by 1000-range Beams; countering it with Shields has nullified that huge advantage, but at the price of exposing the central problem again.

Universals for the two fixed-point missile slots would make it a Railgun / Light Needler platform, possibly, but with tricky loadouts, as the AI would not do well with kiting if Tac Lasers were installed.  That's probably a reasonable solution with Vanilla remaining more-or-less what it is now.

As it is, I think the Wolf's OK-ish as a player-ship with Pulse Lasers or Heavy Blasters, at least early on; against Hounds or Cerebi, it can generally get to a flank and kill them.  With Hard Flux on Beams, Tac Laser can return to reasonable ranges (in Rebal over here, it's 700 atm) and still be pretty balanced; Wolf spam can burn shields, but it can be countered and it's relatively low-harm.

Later than early-game, the Wolf's sole use that I've found is as engine-killing flanker with Ion Beams.  It can work if the player's using orders intelligently to put a Wolf pack behind things that are vulnerable, but frankly, it's a lot of work to manage them.