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Author Topic: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???  (Read 21962 times)

Lucky33

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #90 on: December 31, 2019, 06:00:56 AM »

No, as you noted yourself what really makes fighters strong is enemy AI inadequacy.
AI just does worst thing possible with it's indecisive half-way attacks. Any of 3 ways works better:
- full berserk attack
- full timid avoidance
- grind down the fighters and attack the drained carrier (need to judge if match-up actually allows this and switch tactics midway, so AI can only occasionally blunder into rough approximation of this).

- You Medusa tried exactly that.
- Doesnt work. Fighters cant be ignored. They more than capable to break shields and disable engines.
- Your Hammerheads (mostly that one with the RFC) destroyed several waves of fighters and did get to the drained carrier.

- Medusa only barely works as player ship vs fighters, as AI it's mostly useless. But for Enforcer or Hammerhead rushing is good tactic.
- Most fighters have 4000 range, carriers themselves are not especially fast => stay 4k+ away and you'll be fine. I mean you won't win and probably will have to retreat, but it still beats dying.
- It's not quite same. AI just blunders into fighters and happens to kill them after taking some damage, then slowly approaches the carrier allowing it to rebuild fighters. Player backpedals to prolong approach, activates AAF and clears the fighters before they do significant damage, then rushes to carrier.

- I dont believe in the Enforcer. It kinda ends up with the SO, ARU Hammerhead.
- Sorry but at 4000 range I can do Sparks.
- It didnt matter. Hammerhead got overloaded by sabots.
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Tackywheat1

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #91 on: December 31, 2019, 06:07:06 AM »

At 8000 su, Storm Needler has exactly zero hit ratio on the Condor. Whatever damage it deals to fighters will be regenerated back. Free of charge, obviously. All beyond shield damage to the Storm Needler carrier will be permanent.

And compare this to FMR and the missile balance as a whole.

Condor needs another ship to SPOT targets for the thunders 8k range to be used
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Lucky33

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #92 on: December 31, 2019, 06:08:16 AM »

At 8000 su, Storm Needler has exactly zero hit ratio on the Condor. Whatever damage it deals to fighters will be regenerated back. Free of charge, obviously. All beyond shield damage to the Storm Needler carrier will be permanent.

And compare this to FMR and the missile balance as a whole.

Condor needs another ship to SPOT targets for the thunders 8k range to be used

When was the last time you did the single ship campaign playthrough?
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Tackywheat1

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #93 on: December 31, 2019, 06:18:51 AM »

OK. Took control of myself. Did some testing against Paragon.

Since it wasnt able to deploy its shields fully before Thunders arrival it got disabled right from the start. I could circle around it in the Astral and kite indefinitely without ever allowing replacement rate to get lower than 90%. If I would be allowed to call this a combat it was completely one sided. Each time Paragon traded part of its armor/hull for several fighters and thats all. Since it can only shoot down about 4 fighters on approach, you dont need Astral to make it work. Couple of Drovers is enough.

Again, the difference between SIM Paragon without any officer skills and controlled by AI vs an officered Astral controlled by player is HUGE. Go play 2 of the missions, Coral Nebula (enjoy trying to kill an Onslaught and 2 Dominators with PD build as an Astral) and the other one where you have to kill an Astral with a dominator and 2? frigates
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Lucky33

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #94 on: December 31, 2019, 07:04:07 AM »

Nope. That was perfectly officer-less Astral. With the officer I could just outright kill the Paragon. No kiting needed.
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Thaago

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #95 on: December 31, 2019, 10:07:19 AM »

Really only Devastators can handle true fighter death balls.
This true?  When I used Needler and Devastator Onslaught, Devastator did not seem to be effective enough against fighters.  It seems to take the whole burst to kill a fighter or two.  It is not popping wings like Doom's mine strike.

Its not nearly as good as a Doom mine strike - I'd forgotten about those tbh. But its damage done keeps scaling with the number of enemy fighters because its an AoE, and a wide area/inaccurate one at that. Its a bit flux wasteful against say 3 wings, but shines when fighting 40, as it is AoE. When testing for the tournament before last (so no skills) triple devastator Onslaught was my go to for how low tech could beat drover-thunder spam, though it gave up some anti-ship performance to be able to chew through so many wings.
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Arcagnello

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #96 on: December 31, 2019, 10:45:35 AM »

I personally love the dual flak for AA. It's got great DPS, it does HE damage, actually hits without a dedicated point defence AI, the only meh thing about it being the very short range making it only very effective on flagships using ITU.

I tried really hard to use devastator cannons but they just don't give me that costant cover flak does. I just wish it fuctioned like an autopulse laser with very, very bad accuracy and a decently sized clip.
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Tackywheat1

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #97 on: December 31, 2019, 11:29:14 AM »

Nope. That was perfectly officer-less Astral. With the officer I could just outright kill the Paragon. No kiting needed.

Player control still makes a big difference.

If you want something that will utterly shut down missiles and fighters, get SCY and fill an Onslaught with all Nanoneedles and mount IPDAI. Generates an insane PD cloud that shuts down anything near it (by near I mean the range of the nanoneedles which is 700, possibly longer?)

There was a video on discord posted by someone who created this build and demonstrated it vs a large number of carriers
« Last Edit: December 31, 2019, 11:31:45 AM by Tackywheat1 »
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Thaago

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #98 on: December 31, 2019, 11:39:23 AM »

I personally love the dual flak for AA. It's got great DPS, it does HE damage, actually hits without a dedicated point defence AI, the only meh thing about it being the very short range making it only very effective on flagships using ITU.

I tried really hard to use devastator cannons but they just don't give me that costant cover flak does. I just wish it fuctioned like an autopulse laser with very, very bad accuracy and a decently sized clip.

I don't think that dual flak does HE, but I agree its great for constant cover, and its a quite efficient high DPS gun. Devastators are actually pretty poor against missiles because of their long cycle time - after that first burst, the missiles are going to come right in! - but against massed fighters its damage and range make it a very good weapon.
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Tackywheat1

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #99 on: December 31, 2019, 11:41:40 AM »

I personally love the dual flak for AA. It's got great DPS, it does HE damage, actually hits without a dedicated point defence AI, the only meh thing about it being the very short range making it only very effective on flagships using ITU.

I tried really hard to use devastator cannons but they just don't give me that costant cover flak does. I just wish it fuctioned like an autopulse laser with very, very bad accuracy and a decently sized clip.

I don't think that dual flak does HE, but I agree its great for constant cover, and its a quite efficient high DPS gun. Devastators are actually pretty poor against missiles because of their long cycle time - after that first burst, the missiles are going to come right in! - but against massed fighters its damage and range make it a very good weapon.

Dual flak does Frag damage and I also agree it provides very nice missile cover
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Arcagnello

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #100 on: December 31, 2019, 01:09:43 PM »

I personally love the dual flak for AA. It's got great DPS, it does HE damage, actually hits without a dedicated point defence AI, the only meh thing about it being the very short range making it only very effective on flagships using ITU.

I tried really hard to use devastator cannons but they just don't give me that costant cover flak does. I just wish it fuctioned like an autopulse laser with very, very bad accuracy and a decently sized clip.

I don't think that dual flak does HE, but I agree its great for constant cover, and its a quite efficient high DPS gun. Devastators are actually pretty poor against missiles because of their long cycle time - after that first burst, the missiles are going to come right in! - but against massed fighters its damage and range make it a very good weapon.

Dual flak does Frag damage and I also agree it provides very nice missile cover

I was pretty sure flak does HE damage aswell as the Devastator cannon, machineguns do kinetic and only Vulcans deal fragmentation damage.

What I also like about flak is that the single barrel version has more range, possibly making it the most efficient missile busting weapon in the vanilla game.

I've got a tyrant design (a ship from Vayra's ship pack) that can actually beat an Astral and an Onslaught under AI control mainly thanks to both having 5 dual flaks and integrated point defence AI. Effectively neutralizing 4 Annihilator rocket pods, 6 bomber wings and two squalls is no small feat and I do not think an equal OP amount worth of Annihilator cannons could do the same.
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Tackywheat1

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #101 on: December 31, 2019, 02:42:18 PM »

I personally love the dual flak for AA. It's got great DPS, it does HE damage, actually hits without a dedicated point defence AI, the only meh thing about it being the very short range making it only very effective on flagships using ITU.

I tried really hard to use devastator cannons but they just don't give me that costant cover flak does. I just wish it fuctioned like an autopulse laser with very, very bad accuracy and a decently sized clip.

I don't think that dual flak does HE, but I agree its great for constant cover, and its a quite efficient high DPS gun. Devastators are actually pretty poor against missiles because of their long cycle time - after that first burst, the missiles are going to come right in! - but against massed fighters its damage and range make it a very good weapon.

Dual flak does Frag damage and I also agree it provides very nice missile cover

I was pretty sure flak does HE damage aswell as the Devastator cannon, machineguns do kinetic and only Vulcans deal fragmentation damage.

What I also like about flak is that the single barrel version has more range, possibly making it the most efficient missile busting weapon in the vanilla game.

I've got a tyrant design (a ship from Vayra's ship pack) that can actually beat an Astral and an Onslaught under AI control mainly thanks to both having 5 dual flaks and integrated point defence AI. Effectively neutralizing 4 Annihilator rocket pods, 6 bomber wings and two squalls is no small feat and I do not think an equal OP amount worth of Annihilator cannons could do the same.

Flak does Frag damage. Go check the weapons_data.csv file or check the in game description.
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Arcagnello

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #102 on: December 31, 2019, 02:49:09 PM »

O.o holy moly, I always thought they were high explosive.

Still, they are so much better than machineguns, especially without integrated point defence AI. All non-AOE or non-hitbox point defence is so damn hopeless against anything that is not directly barreling towards it, the only one that gets saved being the Vulcan as it's so damn inaccurate it actually IMPROVES its hit rate with no Dmods.
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Lucky33

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #103 on: January 01, 2020, 04:00:24 AM »

Nope. That was perfectly officer-less Astral. With the officer I could just outright kill the Paragon. No kiting needed.

Player control still makes a big difference.

If you want something that will utterly shut down missiles and fighters, get SCY and fill an Onslaught with all Nanoneedles and mount IPDAI. Generates an insane PD cloud that shuts down anything near it (by near I mean the range of the nanoneedles which is 700, possibly longer?)

There was a video on discord posted by someone who created this build and demonstrated it vs a large number of carriers

Clearly, there is no need to control anything when you field 60 DP of carriers against Paragon.

Its not me who need something to deal with fighters and missiles. Its the AI. Also, please, dont bring up the mods as a fix to the broken balance. Cant fix a broken thing by breaking it even further.
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Plantissue

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Re: Colossus Mk.III best ship ???
« Reply #104 on: January 01, 2020, 08:57:28 AM »

Nope. That was perfectly officer-less Astral. With the officer I could just outright kill the Paragon. No kiting needed.

Player control still makes a big difference.

If you want something that will utterly shut down missiles and fighters, get SCY and fill an Onslaught with all Nanoneedles and mount IPDAI. Generates an insane PD cloud that shuts down anything near it (by near I mean the range of the nanoneedles which is 700, possibly longer?)

There was a video on discord posted by someone who created this build and demonstrated it vs a large number of carriers
Mod balance has no place in a discussion about unmodded game. If I made a mod which has a missile that was fast, accurate, high damage and with infinite ammunition and with high HP, that would not make missiles unbeatable in an unmodded game.
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