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[Arcagnello]

Hello fellow space farers! I've got to a point in my first campaign where I pick any ship I have not yet included in my fleet to see if it's fitting my current playstile and ended up with a set of units (I'll omit the support vessels)  witch can be combined to deal with all the scenarios I've encountered (so far, no spolers on those please  ) :

1 Paragon Battleship  to just be there and tank, sometimes laser things to death. I leave it to the AI since it has a litteral pixel perfect use of the Fortress shield and I can just point it in the general direction of the enemy main line and it'll stop it somewhat

2 Astral Carries to curbstomp anything that's not a flagship in one strike

2 Doom Phase Cruisers to deal with large enemy vessels or bases

4 Aurora Cruisers to both kill all they can chase and survive all that can chase them without a sweat. Great for making quick work of anything but bases and (tanky) enemy capitals

4 Dominator Assault Cruisers for overall DAKKA to rain down when the hunter-killer and retreating potential of the Auroras is not required

2 Drover Carriers to screen the Astrals and/or supress enemy fighter/bomber spam when needed

So, here is my question: Could I consider switching both my Dominators and Drovers for a Couple of Legions? I took a quick glance of the latter and it seems to combine the two smaller units in a more durable, flexible package. What could I lose on based on your experiences?

Also, here's both my Dominator and Drover setups for reference. Thank you in advance!




OFC it's got two Spark fighter squadrons

[bobucles]

The legion has a mountain of turrets, but nowhere near enough OP to be happy about its loadouts. As a brawler it lacks on flux, and it's too expensive to be just a carrier. The burn drive will toss it into combat, which isn't great because it's not a dedicated front line ship.

There is a major difference of weapons between the standard and XIV models. Standard has 2 big ballistics and lots of medium composite(ballistic/missile), while XIV has 2 big missiles and a pile of ballistics. Take your choice on small weapons. Railguns can provide some fire support against enemy shields, but point defense won't stress your tiny flux budget. I've enjoyed the pure PD/anti fighter loadout, but I don't know much about big battles.

[Arcagnello]

Thank you for the loading breakdown! Did not know about it!

I sorta feared what you said tough, had a feeling it would be neither meet or fish.
That said, it might actually shine if

1)you pump it full of long range shield busting and emp weaponry like railguns, Gauss cannons and Hypervelocity drivers

2)you fit it with the heaviest fighters at your disposal

Watch it as it overloads Shields, stuns the target and eats it alive with fighters. In theory. Maybe. Hopefully. Will try once I get my hands on either crappy, salvaged versions, bought thru the black market or even built by myself if I can find it's blueprint.

[FooF]

The Legion is one of the most versatile ships in the game as long as you don't stretch its meager flux budget too thin.

With the standard Legion (not XIV), the Large Ballistics have to be modest. Hellbores or Mark IX are relatively flux efficient and low OP. A Devastator cannon can also work. It's the Medium mounts that run you into the most trouble, flux and OP wise. Again, stay modest. A Hypervelocity Driver is a very effective weapon but it costs a lot of OP. Same goes for a Heavy Mauler. I tend to stick with Heavy Mortars or Heavy ACs or go with Flak because it doesn't cost much flux. For the Smalls, except for a few of the forward firing mounts, everything is a Vulcan and I sometimes skip a few small mounts altogether.

As for the Fighters, I synergize them with the overall loadout and prioritize a few with lasting presence, rather than bombers that need to re-load. If I have a Hellbore and a Mark IX backed up by Heavy Mortars, I want anti-shield so I'll grab a Broadsword and Longbow with a Warthog and Khopesh for anti-armor duty. I tend to have a bunch of generalists rather than ultra-specific ships so my Legions are very good all-rounders.

[intrinsic_parity]

you can put 5 sabot pods and HE bombers on and absolutely delete the first 10-15 ships you encounter

[Arcagnello]

Interesting. Would the direct opposite of the loading you proposed work too? As in an armor-hull busting fighter wing like warthogs (maybe a 50 50 split with ion cannon fighters) synergizing with longer range weapons work as well?

[Tackywheat1]

you can put 5 sabot pods and HE bombers on and absolutely delete the first 10-15 ships you encounter

What would you put on the large ballistics and small ballistics. Hellbores and vulcans?

Anyway Drovers should never be replaced. Their ship system is extremely valuable in contributing to fighter density.

[intrinsic_parity]

you can put 5 sabot pods and HE bombers on and absolutely delete the first 10-15 ships you encounter

What would you put on the large ballistics and small ballistics. Hellbores and vulcans?

It doesn't matter too much. Small are probably pd, vulcans are fine. I would probably put mark IX + hellbore to try and make the ship functional once the sabots run out, but expanded missile racks gives 120 sabots so maybe you could get away with only HE damage outside of sabots. You do have a bit of extra flux to play with since all the mediums use no flux, so you could try hephestus + mark IX. Maybe you could squeeze double mjolnir in, but there might not be enough OP for max dissipation and expanded missile racks and decent bombers. TBH, I don't use the ship too much once I have an astral, so I don't have a super specific loadout in mind.

[Plantissue]

So, here is my question: Could I consider switching both my Dominators and Drovers for a Couple of Legions? I took a quick glance of the latter and it seems to combine the two smaller units in a more durable, flexible package. What could I lose on based on your experiences?

I suppose you could since you aren't using hullmods best suited to them anyways, (Dedicated Targeting Core/Integrated targeting unit for Dominator and Expanded Deck Crew for Drover) and you have no rear protection on the Dominator and got no real weapons on the Drover anyways so you aren't losing much by combining them together, since you aren't using either ships to their full potential.

Be aware that hullmods costs change according to hulltype, so you may not be able to fit all the hullmods you want, but you now can remove Hardened Subsystem or Flux Distributor. So in theory I guess you can have the exact same weapons on both ships into the Legion and have 4 Sparks as an alternative to 2 sparks and reserve deployment ship system for the same offensive power.

I am assuming that you are just going to take the exact same weapons as on the Dominator and Drover and slap them on the base Legion. The Legion does have enough turret hardpoints to take them all afterall. If you are happy with that, then you don't need to change anything, and the Legion will have exactly the same firepower and point defence as both previous ships combined. I am more of a fan of vulcans, but with Sparks, I suppose it doesn't matter too much. If you want additional weapons, you still have 3 medium turrets free. There is utterly no need to take railguns.

The only thing you lose is survivability from speed and manoeuvrability. You will feel it most keenly from the replacement of the Drover. No longer is your dedicated Sparks carrier able to hide from combat, but is now delving into combat. Compared with the Dominator, you now can be hit by things like Squalls where you wasn't before.

You may feel a loss of range from more backwards mounted large ballistic mounts. But since you don't have range extending hullmods, maybe you don't care anyways. Switching will mean you will use up fuel faster.

[Arcagnello]

I used to run range extension on the Dominators but I was not getting the roadblock feeling I sought for to pretty much stop the enemy from advancing, so I went with high flux long range pressure and added flux saving in the from of hardened Shields to have the enemy back off instead of me and allowing all my damage dealers to work better.

As for the Drover, I am rely, really a novice at fighter carriers so I pretty much got the smallest carrier that could buff fighters, slapped the most versatile one that did not bleed crew and filled it out with support modspecs.

What does a expanded deck crew modspec do exactly?

[Plantissue]

Expanded Deck Crew Hull Mod:

Reduces the rate at which the fighter replacement rate decreases due to fighter losses by 25%, and increases the rate at which it recovers by 50%.
Increases the crew required by 20 per fighter bay.

Costs 8 Ordnance Points on Drover and 20 OP on Legion.

Since you have obtained Sparks, I would assume you are well progressed into the game and have all hullmods. If not, go buy all hullmods you do not have already when you see them, just so you can see them.

Sparks are arguably the best non-bomber fighter. Very OP effective, fast and survivable. Also can kill almost anything.

https://imgur.com/7GBrHV3

This is basically your two ships combined together into a Legion. I removed Hardened Subsystem or Flux Distributor as like I said earlier, and also Efficiency Overhaul, since Dominator doesn't have it anyways and it is the larger ship. So you have the total Flux Capacity of both ships combined, the weapons and Flux Dissipation of the main weapons of the Dominator. PD arc of the 4 Light Dual Machine Gun are similar to the 2 from each of the Dominator and Drover. I couldn't put the Vulcan Cannon in the centre turret. Personally I would just get 2 Flak Cannon to replace all the PD you have, as it is much better.

So in comparison, you got roughly the same Shields and Hull, same weapons and Flux Dissipation and 40-100% more sparks, and 2% more ECM and Nav rating. DP cost gone from 37 to 40. You lose the speed of the Drover. I'm sure you can shift OP around yourself.

[Arcagnello]

Will snuggle one in there on my carriers once I get back home

Thank you!

[Igncom1]

Yeah the spark's "PD" weapon basically does more damage then most actual weapons. It's hilariously strong, but I'm ok with that.

Just wish the LUX was a little better as well.

[Arcagnello]

They might as well switch weapons between Spark and Lux and it would pretty much make the former sane and the latter viable 

[Plantissue]

I think it is more of that both fighters and soft flux weapons exhibit the critical mass problem. You have fighters? More fighters make it better. That fighter is survivable and has burst PD? Even more of that fighter is even better. Swopping Lux and Spark waepon wouldn't chnage that. Small amounts of Sparks is not a problem, though I feel like it should be closer to 12 OP. I'm not a fan of High Delay weapon, but if Spark's Burst PD was high delay so it would recover a charge every 4 seconds, it would alleviate that somewhat. At the very least, you would need more burst PD to overpower shields, which is the moment when Sparks achieved that critical mass.