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Author Topic: Ideal Fleet Composition  (Read 20082 times)

DukeTritus

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Ideal Fleet Composition
« on: March 22, 2020, 02:03:52 PM »

I'm at the point where I can produce whatever ships I want and whatever weapons I want, but I am going up against some very powerful enemy fleets and I want to get an idea of what kind of fleet composition is generally the best to use. Should I be spamming capital ships? Should I use a combination of capital ships + big carriers? Should smaller destroyers ever be a part of the fight? The main problem is that I have limited deployment points and I am not sure how to effectively use them. Often times I run into the problem of being outgunned. For example, I went up against a Tri-Tachyon fleet that had a paragon, a bunch of heron and eos carriers, and some phase ships. I used a paragon and 2 astrals but my paragon ended up being overpowered by the enemy and destroyed.

So to summarize, what kind of fleet compositions do you use? Or what do you think is the best composition against higher-end enemy fleets?
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Mondaymonkey

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Re: Ideal Fleet Composition
« Reply #1 on: March 22, 2020, 03:17:57 PM »

Let the holy war begin!

There are no ideal solution. Many compositions can be almost same effective. Probably, bigger role is for the tactics, loadouts, officers and your own actions as pilot.

For example, you deploy a Paragon and two astrals? Well, that is can be enough to defeat most of the tri-tach fleets. Let me guess, astrals are solid-bombers? If so, who will escort a paragon? Alone paragon - dead paragon. You need some fighters or bigger ships to support your mammoth. And what kind of officer you have? Do they have a proper skills? For example, you should never assign reckless officer to a paragon - he will drop shields to often = death. Paragon officer should have gunnery implants and defensive systems skill and off course no carrier skills, else - it is waste of DP. Officer for astral should have carriers skills and speed/defense, not offensive one. What kind of loadout your paragon have? Is it beamspam? Will not work against high-tech ships. Autopulse spam will help against single enemy, but sucks against large diverse fleet. Plasma, heavy needlers or HVD, some HIL or tachs + smaller beams will work. But more important - shield hullmods: hardened shields, solar shielding, stabilized shields and even shield conversion - front will dramatically increase survivability.

And, off course, don't be a dumb - use your CP to give a proper orders, reacting on a battle situation.
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JaronK

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Re: Ideal Fleet Composition
« Reply #2 on: March 22, 2020, 10:03:14 PM »

Personally, I like using Legions and Moras as backup for my main ship, which is either an Onslaught or Paragon.  Those carriers can stay alive for ages and harass enemies, and the Legions have enough punch to get a decent number of kills.  As long as my main attack ship stays near a legion, I can just finish off whatever that ship targets and call it good.

The rest of the fleet is mostly Atlases, Prometheuses, Salvage Rigs, and Oxen, with one shielded cargo holds ship for illicit cargo.
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pedro1_1

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Re: Ideal Fleet Composition
« Reply #3 on: March 23, 2020, 12:30:10 AM »

    For me, fleet composition revolves aroung the flagship, and some flagships can break some ships, since I use mixed fleets that can actually fill every role during a fight, for example:

    My normal flagship is the Odyssey, as such I need something to take damage until I get behind enemy lines, as such I will prefer ships like the Onslaught and Paragon, while also needing extra suport from fast ships, since Odyssey is a fast ship itself, which means I want someting like the Aurora or the Falcon, let's say I use the Paragon for the Anvil, I can bring in one Aurora, to go flank with me, and one Falcon to suport the Paragon, and still have DP left for two Herons, equiped for bombing runs and one Condor equiped with fighters and interceptors, and that's 200DP, since Odyssey costs 45DP, the Paragon 60, the Aurora 30, the Falcon 15, the Herons 40, and to finish 200DP the Condor's 10DP, this is a very strong line breaker, basically you can overrun the enemy lines and pick the weak carriers first them go back and hit the their capitals from behind.

   But that would not work when I want to use a Legion(XIV), as my flagship, so I want the enemy to break itself tring to break my lines(WWI wants it's strategy back), and for that I need more heavy ships, as such I can bring in two Apogees as the Legion alone is not enought to hold the lineand since I want the enemys to break thensenves in the process, let's bring in an Astral to use it's bomber complement as a means to help to the process, since I don't need a carrier to send Fighters dawn rang, that's part of the Legions job, and to finish we have two bean suport Tempests and one HVD Hound(A), this one has 3 ships to keep the line and 4 ships to help the line be mantained, it also costs 200DP, 40 from Legion, 36 from the Apogees, 45 from Astral, 16 from the Tempests, and 3 from the Hound(A).
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Megas

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Re: Ideal Fleet Composition
« Reply #4 on: March 23, 2020, 12:14:22 PM »

The most infamous power fleet in this release is Drover and Spark spam.
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TaLaR

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Re: Ideal Fleet Composition
« Reply #5 on: March 23, 2020, 12:22:21 PM »

The most DP-efficient fleet is chain-deployed Afflictor spam. Single optimally player-piloted 8 DP Afflictor with maxed out character can kill up to 300 DP of enemy ships, without any fleet support. Though that was vs skill-less sim, so about 100-150 DP is more fair estimate against enemy with max level officers. Then you swap to next Afflictor.
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Igncom1

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Re: Ideal Fleet Composition
« Reply #6 on: March 23, 2020, 12:44:47 PM »

I'm a scrub who doesn't really use the best stuff, but more what takes my fancy at the moment. And while yes filling your fleet with capitals is probably the second best way of killing anything (with drovers filled with interceptors like sparks being probably the best) including star fortresses, I'll draft up a fleet that I'll often tend to use.

Basic Gunboat Capital Fleet:

10 Support Ships
- 2 cruiser or capital size cargo freighters
- 2 destroyer or capital size fuel tankers
- 2 destroyer or cruiser (I think) size crew carriers OR troop transports
- 2 salvaging rigs (for a larger return of supplies and fuel spent after battles)
- 2 fleet tugs (bonus 2 speed)

4 Capital Ships
- 4 Battleships (Onslaught or Paragon classes)

16 Escort Ships
- 8 Sunder-class destroyers
- 8 destroyer or cruiser size carriers OR 4 destroyer or cruiser size carriers and 4 destroyer or cruiser size gunboats

I think you can see what I have going here with this fleet. Big support pool as to allow the fleet proper operational range when tugging about those heavy capital ships. The sunders in my opinion pack the single biggest bang for buck when in capital ship fights and when fighting on the flanks can provide some MASSIVE fire support for the whole fleet if not simply out gunning most smaller ships outright. When fitted with the expectation of losses in battle, you can recover and restore them for fairly cheap costs, making them highly disposable for any duty. A squad of 4 of them can easily murder unsuspecting or distracted capitals. Supporting carriers cap provide the fleet with interceptors for PD and anti-frigate duties, and specialised other gunboats can provide whatever you wish them to. Perhaps fitting them for smaller scale engagements?

As for the battleships? I tend to fit them for shield cracking and front line tanking duties for battling remnants. An onslaught battleship comes with build in energy damage so anything drawing it's ire doesn't need too much HE support anyway. A paragon is always going to be armed with energy weapons, or at the very least HE beams, so it might require additional anti-shield support, but unlikely any anti-armour support. And if you do? The sunder support wing will make mince meat of almost anything that is distracted (varying on load outs of course.)

This what you are looking for?
« Last Edit: March 23, 2020, 12:47:03 PM by Igncom1 »
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Sunders are the best ship in the game.

LikeableKiwi

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Re: Ideal Fleet Composition
« Reply #7 on: May 26, 2021, 05:54:24 PM »

its possible to replace the tachyon lances with a rift cascade emitter by using built in mods to save ordinance points and its without a doubt a worth investment

my setup is
two rift cascade emitter (front or sides)
four graviton beam (front and back)
hypervelocity driver (front)
high intensity laser (front or sides)
tactical laser (all small slots)

hullmods are
advanced targeting core (paragon)
advanced optics (built in)
hardened shield (built in)
integrated point defense AI (built in... one of the skills allows for a third built in slot)
stabilized shields
accelerated shields (helps fighting against groups although less required cause of the integrated PDAI)
advanced turret gyro's
resistant flux conduits (or solar shielding)

it allows you to fight a single paragon with two onslaughts and an astral on autopilot (simulation battles... replacing the astral or paragon with a conquest will require you to manually control the ship instead of an autopilot and to destroy the conquest as fast as possible)
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Phenir

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Re: Ideal Fleet Composition
« Reply #8 on: May 26, 2021, 06:32:30 PM »

But built ins and rift emitters didn't exist a year ago?
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LikeableKiwi

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Re: Ideal Fleet Composition
« Reply #9 on: May 26, 2021, 06:42:42 PM »

if you want to fight a conquest with a paragon use unstable ejector Xd
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LikeableKiwi

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Re: Ideal Fleet Composition
« Reply #10 on: May 26, 2021, 06:44:04 PM »

true... also what a fast reply I wasn't expecting that... I think a year ago the paragon had 407 ordinance points instead of 370
« Last Edit: May 26, 2021, 06:49:19 PM by LikeableKiwi »
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HungwellHamburger

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Re: Ideal Fleet Composition
« Reply #11 on: May 26, 2021, 11:56:13 PM »

I try to follow what I think would be acceptable doctrine for the games task-force sized fleets. Battlecruiser plus carriercas the core, Ive fallen in love with the Bento, it pairs nicely with the Mule to make up the core of my logistics train, which needs minimal escort, a cadre of missle amd picket destroyers plus PD frigates to shore up the line where needed. I get ripped to shreds with regularity by capital spam fleets even on the run, shame AI doesnt have to worry about supply usage.
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