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Author Topic: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice  (Read 12965 times)

StarScum

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Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« on: February 13, 2020, 12:48:33 AM »

What tips do you have for making a fleet specifically to counter Remnant forces?

Does it just have to be the best fleet you can make period or is there some specialization you can do?
« Last Edit: February 13, 2020, 01:50:09 AM by StarScum »
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Daynen

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Re: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« Reply #1 on: February 13, 2020, 02:21:06 AM »

The remnants usually have some pretty hardcore shields; heavy kinetic or energy damage is advisable.  They bring a little bit of everything to the damage table, but tend to have particularly nasty plasma volleys, so ships that are just nimble enough to dodge them might be helpful.  Make sure your fleet has enough range that multiple ships can turn and focus on one enemy craft; the sooner your bring one down the harder it is to flank you.  If you go the red planet make sure you have ships that are naturally difficult to flank since one of them WILL be warping around to your sides to assassinate your escorts.

Once you overload a remnant ship it folds like paper so pick off the smaller ships as fast as possible to stop their guns.
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DDwarrirofire

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Re: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« Reply #2 on: February 13, 2020, 03:18:28 AM »

Since they practically use all energy and shield,  bring lots of kinetic with explosive weapons to help finish.

Solar shielding and heavy turrets can be great on low tech ships which tend to have the weapons I mention.
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geminitiger

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Re: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« Reply #3 on: February 13, 2020, 03:40:36 AM »

focus on your lasers.

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Ishman

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Re: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« Reply #4 on: February 13, 2020, 11:15:49 AM »

Bring as much kinetic as you can, they have paper armor, and while the combat skills can DRASTICALLY cut the damage that kinetic does to armor, it's still going to chip it off when there's so little.

Any slot used on HE is a slot wasted versus remnant, at the very most energy damage is acceptable. Fighter craft should be either their own sparks, or your source of HE from torpedoes.

You'll want your fleet composition to have an overwhelming amount of fighters, high mobility ships so that they can disengage and vent, or a truly ludicrous amount of missile spam, as remnant PD choice is comparatively awful to a fleet which can use flak.

I'll caution that missile spam is a risky choice however, as the AI is particularly awful with using anything that isn't a pressure or finisher for high flux targets, it's particularly bad at using sabots to force high flux as a combat opener.
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Wyvern

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Re: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« Reply #5 on: February 13, 2020, 11:48:27 AM »

Bring as much kinetic as you can, they have paper armor, and while the combat skills can DRASTICALLY cut the damage that kinetic does to armor, it's still going to chip it off when there's so little.

Any slot used on HE is a slot wasted versus remnant, at the very most energy damage is acceptable. Fighter craft should be either their own sparks, or your source of HE from torpedoes.
This advice is great for small-to-medium remnant fleets, but falls short if you're in a high threat system that's had some time to ramp up.  Most remnant ships are classic high-tech designs with strong shields and weak armor, but their battleships are armored enough that having a few HE or high-penetration energy weapons is well worth the investment.

Personally, I've had relatively poor results from throwing fighters at remnants; my best results have come from deploying a quartet of Paragons (set in pairs with escort orders so they don't end up wandering off on their own.)  You can still lose ships even with that; a remnant battleship that happens to roll 5x autopulse laser, 4x harpoon pod, and all the damage-boosting skills is almost guaranteed to kill something.  Fortunately, that specific configuration is quite rare.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Aereto

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Re: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« Reply #6 on: February 13, 2020, 02:12:02 PM »

Spoiler
Bring as much kinetic as you can, they have paper armor, and while the combat skills can DRASTICALLY cut the damage that kinetic does to armor, it's still going to chip it off when there's so little.

Any slot used on HE is a slot wasted versus remnant, at the very most energy damage is acceptable. Fighter craft should be either their own sparks, or your source of HE from torpedoes.
This advice is great for small-to-medium remnant fleets, but falls short if you're in a high threat system that's had some time to ramp up.  Most remnant ships are classic high-tech designs with strong shields and weak armor, but their battleships are armored enough that having a few HE or high-penetration energy weapons is well worth the investment.

Personally, I've had relatively poor results from throwing fighters at remnants; my best results have come from deploying a quartet of Paragons (set in pairs with escort orders so they don't end up wandering off on their own.)  You can still lose ships even with that; a remnant battleship that happens to roll 5x autopulse laser, 4x harpoon pod, and all the damage-boosting skills is almost guaranteed to kill something.  Fortunately, that specific configuration is quite rare.
[close]

HE is something not to disregard, though just 1 high-intensity laser can help make sure the Remnant fleet keep their shield up or lose armor fast when the beam is on them. I field Paragons escorted with Astrals bearing a mix of Atropos torps, Sabots, and Ion beams to support the Paragon on a slug match. The Astral is guarded by a Paragon up front, but its flank is secured either with my piloted Doom recovering from a pincer attack tactic, or an Onslaught geared towards kinetic/EMP and energy/EMP resistance to keep smaller ships at bay or wipe them. Onslaught burn drives work against them when facing long-reaching remnant ships and carriers, so my most effective plan is keeping the Astral secured and use its front-facing shield to significant effect.

I don't typically use the High Intensity Laser due to its flux and its weakness to shields, since I use Tachyon Lance and Plasma Cannon on AI-controlled Paragons to build flux and punish shielding while in high flux with EMP, while the Astral deals a general mix for burst damage. I don't put Ion Beam on a Paragon since it just puts more stress on the flux balancing.

Because of my fleet/industry oriented character build, I cannot just use an Odyssey and act as a flanking capital and broadside targets into the kill zone of my ships. The only combat skills I put are 1 for extended peak time and 3 to make the most out of the phase cloak. I use phase ships since they are effective flanking ships and deliver hammer-and-anvil tactics without having to be directly behind or flanking the enemy. Omni-shield targets get caught between mines or a Paragon/Astral attack, while front-shield targets need good PD to survive. Enemy fighters are surprisingly useful for me to take advantage of and detonate the mines early using their hitbox, and let the target get caught in the blast. I named my Doom auto-fit setting the "Stand" variant for a reason.

Spoiler
In terms of memes, it's having a weaker version of The World using slow time and Killer Queen turning any fighter it touches into objects full of boom.
[close]
« Last Edit: February 13, 2020, 02:14:28 PM by Aereto »
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tseikk1

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Re: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« Reply #7 on: February 13, 2020, 02:42:37 PM »

focus on your lasers.
this is a trap. Lasers are garbage against remnants.
Remnants have strong shields and good dissipation but weak hull and armor, so you want kinetics, such as gauss cannons, heavy needlers and hypervelocity drivers coupled with some heavy explosives, such as MIRV launchers, harpoon- and annihilator pods.
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Aereto

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Re: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« Reply #8 on: February 13, 2020, 03:45:09 PM »

focus on your lasers.
this is a trap. Lasers are garbage against remnants.
Remnants have strong shields and good dissipation but weak hull and armor, so you want kinetics, such as gauss cannons, heavy needlers and hypervelocity drivers coupled with some heavy explosives, such as MIRV launchers, harpoon- and annihilator pods.

All while Conquest battlecruisers are better off in player hands due to broadside-oriented combat and poor shielding (gets more flux per hit than normal and a more narrow shield arc).
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Plantissue

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Re: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« Reply #9 on: February 13, 2020, 04:43:10 PM »

Other than the Radiant, Remnants aren't some unusually powerful force. The only thing of note is that they don't have the usual trash ships cluttering their fleet like Gryphons or Condors. You do need something that can chase down smaller Safety Overide frigates as well as Radiant. They don't require specialisation, but you can configure your fleet to be more effective against them by focusing more on kinetics, but you will still need a source of HE, say about 20-30% of your DPS, so your fleet shouldn't change that much. Perhaps swap out a Dagger for a Longbow, that sort of thing. Small ratios that barely changes much from a fleet that is configured to fight all fleets. The best advice I can give is that you should just learn how to evade and split up remnant fleets. A fleet that can fight a 300 DP fleet can fight with a maximum size remnant ordo fleet with no problem.


focus on your lasers.
this is a trap. Lasers are garbage against remnants.
Remnants have strong shields and good dissipation but weak hull and armor, so you want kinetics, such as gauss cannons, heavy needlers and hypervelocity drivers coupled with some heavy explosives, such as MIRV launchers, harpoon- and annihilator pods.

All while Conquest battlecruisers are better off in player hands due to broadside-oriented combat and poor shielding (gets more flux per hit than normal and a more narrow shield arc).
Every ship is better off in player hands. Conquest in my view is a bit of a waste in the players hands as there are much better ships to pilot, thought the Conquest does have the advantage of being available. In any case the Conquest does quite well in AI hand if you configure it right.
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Ishman

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Re: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« Reply #10 on: February 14, 2020, 05:47:00 AM »

Spoiler
Bring as much kinetic as you can, they have paper armor, and while the combat skills can DRASTICALLY cut the damage that kinetic does to armor, it's still going to chip it off when there's so little.

Any slot used on HE is a slot wasted versus remnant, at the very most energy damage is acceptable. Fighter craft should be either their own sparks, or your source of HE from torpedoes.
This advice is great for small-to-medium remnant fleets, but falls short if you're in a high threat system that's had some time to ramp up.  Most remnant ships are classic high-tech designs with strong shields and weak armor, but their battleships are armored enough that having a few HE or high-penetration energy weapons is well worth the investment.

Personally, I've had relatively poor results from throwing fighters at remnants; my best results have come from deploying a quartet of Paragons (set in pairs with escort orders so they don't end up wandering off on their own.)  You can still lose ships even with that; a remnant battleship that happens to roll 5x autopulse laser, 4x harpoon pod, and all the damage-boosting skills is almost guaranteed to kill something.  Fortunately, that specific configuration is quite rare.
[close]

This is advice coming from primarily modded SS games, where the remnant fleet compositions aren't so consistently weak. With seeker and SWP ships filling out their roster, the remnant are particularly disgusting combatants - if you can't flux Novas backed by Solars, you'll lose hundreds of DP worth of ships to take them out.

In vanilla it matters a lot less - if you have something that can shield tank or survive armor tanking one radiant, then so long as your fleet composition isn't completely awful it should be a steamroll without AI suicide.
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Megas

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Re: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« Reply #11 on: February 14, 2020, 05:52:31 AM »

The only Remnant that is overpowered is the Radiant.  The rest are on par with the better human ships.

While kinetics are important, some way to finish off ships quickly is good too.  Something to break armor (HE or high damage energy), and then run down or snipe at Remnants (especially Radiant) when they back off when losing the flux war.  It is a pain to bring Radiant to near overload, only for them to run away to vent.
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TaLaR

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Re: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« Reply #12 on: February 14, 2020, 06:12:40 AM »

Ai behaves very differently when it sees no single HE/large hit energy weapon on attacker. Remnants will armor-tank-vent into your face constantly for great effect due to high level officers (with likely armor skills).
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Plantissue

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Re: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« Reply #13 on: February 14, 2020, 10:12:11 AM »

Spoiler
Bring as much kinetic as you can, they have paper armor, and while the combat skills can DRASTICALLY cut the damage that kinetic does to armor, it's still going to chip it off when there's so little.

Any slot used on HE is a slot wasted versus remnant, at the very most energy damage is acceptable. Fighter craft should be either their own sparks, or your source of HE from torpedoes.
This advice is great for small-to-medium remnant fleets, but falls short if you're in a high threat system that's had some time to ramp up.  Most remnant ships are classic high-tech designs with strong shields and weak armor, but their battleships are armored enough that having a few HE or high-penetration energy weapons is well worth the investment.

Personally, I've had relatively poor results from throwing fighters at remnants; my best results have come from deploying a quartet of Paragons (set in pairs with escort orders so they don't end up wandering off on their own.)  You can still lose ships even with that; a remnant battleship that happens to roll 5x autopulse laser, 4x harpoon pod, and all the damage-boosting skills is almost guaranteed to kill something.  Fortunately, that specific configuration is quite rare.
[close]

This is advice coming from primarily modded SS games, where the remnant fleet compositions aren't so consistently weak. With seeker and SWP ships filling out their roster, the remnant are particularly disgusting combatants - if you can't flux Novas backed by Solars, you'll lose hundreds of DP worth of ships to take them out.

In vanilla it matters a lot less - if you have something that can shield tank or survive armor tanking one radiant, then so long as your fleet composition isn't completely awful it should be a steamroll without AI suicide.
What's the point of fluxing out whatever these modded ships are, if you can't hurt them after fluxing them out? Going pure kinetics against a Radiant, or any other capital for that matter is bad advice. Remnant fleets have an average amount of armour overall so I don't know why you say they have paper armour, because they do not.
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Ishman

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Re: Anti-Remnant Fleet Advice
« Reply #14 on: February 14, 2020, 12:48:48 PM »

What's the point of fluxing out whatever these modded ships are, if you can't hurt them after fluxing them out? Going pure kinetics against a Radiant, or any other capital for that matter is bad advice. Remnant fleets have an average amount of armour overall so I don't know why you say they have paper armour, because they do not.

I'd appreciate if you would take a moment to read my messages, as I do attempt to carefully choose my words; at least most of the time.

Any slot used on HE is a slot wasted versus remnant, at the very most energy damage is acceptable. Fighter craft should be either their own sparks, or your source of HE from torpedoes.
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