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Author Topic: Tactics, and fleets.  (Read 5157 times)

Tlee3205

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Tactics, and fleets.
« on: August 25, 2013, 10:07:01 AM »

I am posting this thread because I noticed the lack of a thread to post strategies and fleet loadouts. The purpose of this thread is to discuss your fleets and individual ships. I like to use a wolf class in the beginning and pinch my pennies to buy a lasher.  ;) What strategies do you use?
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Tlee3205

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Re: Tactics, and fleets.
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2013, 04:54:18 PM »

 :'( Nobody seems to be responding. *sad*


I load the venture class with annihilators and such. It tends to work quite well. I also make use of the handy-dandy flight deck. I prefer thunder multirole fighters, but when they are destroyed I might choose to switch to warthogs or wasps; neither of which I have tried. I prefer the venture over the condor or gemini since it can actually fight. What carrier go you guys use? I haven't seen any with more than one flight deck but I heard one ship had 3.
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sirboomalot

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Re: Tactics, and fleets.
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2013, 05:49:40 PM »

Hounds. ALL the hounds. Arm'em with maulers and hypervelocity drivers, a few with needlers, a few with some sort of short range gun and a shield to tank the enemy damage, and not even an onslaught can stand up to the swarm. Oh, and the ship with 3 flight decks is the Astral.
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sdmike1

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Re: Tactics, and fleets.
« Reply #3 on: August 25, 2013, 06:07:30 PM »

Hounds. ALL the hounds.
This is probably the best advice i have herd in a long time. I am not kidding hound swarm is OP. lol

Coolrah

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Re: Tactics, and fleets.
« Reply #4 on: August 26, 2013, 01:17:24 AM »

Hounds. ALL the hounds.
This is probably the best advice i have herd in a long time. I am not kidding hound swarm is OP. lol

I feel like a swarm of hounds would still fall to a regular player fleet. Unless there is a way to get them all to attack one target all at the same time and to stay within a loose formation so as to not kill each other  or get hit by stray missiles or strike weapons. Even with the armor upgrade or sheild upgrade they don't have enough OP on them to really make them that groundbreaking without odd already overwhelmingly in there favor.

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Shoat

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Re: Tactics, and fleets.
« Reply #5 on: August 26, 2013, 02:23:32 AM »

Hounds. ALL the hounds.
This is probably the best advice i have herd in a long time. I am not kidding hound swarm is OP. lol

I feel like a swarm of hounds would still fall to a regular player fleet. Unless there is a way to get them all to attack one target all at the same time and to stay within a loose formation so as to not kill each other  or get hit by stray missiles or strike weapons. Even with the armor upgrade or sheild upgrade they don't have enough OP on them to really make them that groundbreaking without odd already overwhelmingly in there favor.

Players do not usually fight themselves, so they can't exactly "fall to a regular player fleet".

Getting them to all attack one target is really *** easy, you switch to the command interface and tell them to do so (Either the "Engage" or the "Intercept" commands will do, depending on how many hounds exactly have).

And the ship AI is already smart enough to not have ships bump into each other and they all have flares to counter missiles. The only thing that happens is that they fly in front of the player ship while the player is shooting (they can't predict player actions, but they do predict each other's actions).
They won't get hit by stray strike weapons, because strike weapons usually have pitifully low range.

And lastly, hounds have medium ballistic slots. That means they can equip 1000-range weapons like hypervelocity or mauler. Most standard variants in the game used by the enemy fleets do not include ANY long-range weapons, so these two weapons are super overpowered against them, especially if used by a large swarm of fast, agile frigates.



There are reasons why experienced players would advise people to build a swarm of hounds, those two guys weren't joking around or something.
Hounds are cheap as ***, really fast, have a medium ballistic slot for long-range weaponry to stay out of weapon range of enemy ships, they have flares to avoid missiles, they cost very few fleet points and you never need to employ a freighter alongside them since they have lots of cargo space. It's the best thing you can do in the unmodded game to gain money and experience and build yourself up to a point where you can afford a large capital ship and then be unkillable in it.
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Coolrah

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Re: Tactics, and fleets.
« Reply #6 on: August 26, 2013, 03:24:03 AM »

Hounds. ALL the hounds.
This is probably the best advice i have herd in a long time. I am not kidding hound swarm is OP. lol

I feel like a swarm of hounds would still fall to a regular player fleet. Unless there is a way to get them all to attack one target all at the same time and to stay within a loose formation so as to not kill each other  or get hit by stray missiles or strike weapons. Even with the armor upgrade or sheild upgrade they don't have enough OP on them to really make them that groundbreaking without odd already overwhelmingly in there favor.

stuff

First all I can say is what? and second I'm not saying its not a viable fleet choice. I'm just saying that its not something I would recommend without saying both the positives and negatives. Yeah sure you named all the great things about having a hound cheap cost, fast ships can outmaneuver anything and the medium slot to boot. But that only gets you so far. Majority of ships ingame themselves can take on 1- multiple hounds by themselves and your acting as if a swarm of hounds is op any ship swarm in this game is usually going to end up OP. Thats why we have limits in the first place. A Hounds only has 2 wep slots...., Hounds armor is like paper, yeah strike weapons have low range but there are plenty of ships that can mount and get in close with a hound and its not like they have sheilds to hide from it so its do or die. Plus any missile heavy fleet is gonna shred that hound swarm to dust. Flares don't always work as intended as I've seen flares make harpoons that were going to miss redirect and actually hit the hound so its not a insta save me ship system. Another thing why risk your cargo space in combat theres a reason why you have a choice of what ships you deploy in combat. Theres a reason no one waste FP on freighers so why waste it on hounds especially if your trying to argue for it as an OP Swarm ship. Oh so when I lose a few I run the risk of accidents further making my life harder?

All I'm saying is that a "experienced" player would never tell someone to get all of 1 ship especially a ship that has so many weaknesses in crucial areas to player progression. I'd love to see a swarm of hounds take on a Hedgemony defense fleet or hell let em take a crack at the tri trech fleets would be fun to watch the hound wrecks collect.
« Last Edit: August 26, 2013, 03:31:12 AM by Coolrah »
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sdmike1

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Re: Tactics, and fleets.
« Reply #7 on: August 26, 2013, 05:53:47 AM »

Hounds. ALL the hounds.
This is probably the best advice i have herd in a long time. I am not kidding hound swarm is OP. lol

I feel like a swarm of hounds would still fall to a regular player fleet. Unless there is a way to get them all to attack one target all at the same time and to stay within a loose formation so as to not kill each other  or get hit by stray missiles or strike weapons. Even with the armor upgrade or sheild upgrade they don't have enough OP on them to really make them that groundbreaking without odd already overwhelmingly in there favor.

stuff
All I'm saying is that a "experienced" player would never tell someone to get all of 1 ship especially a ship that has so many weaknesses in crucial areas to player progression. I'd love to see a swarm of hounds take on a Hedgemony defense fleet or hell let em take a crack at the tri trech fleets would be fun to watch the hound wrecks collect.
Icepick would ;)

If I had a max fleet, ya i would just adjust the ratio of hyper v drivers to heavy maulers.  Another slightly more difficult tactic to pull off (due to rarity) is the mass shuttle, antimatter blasters and ion-cannons for the win.

Thaago

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Re: Tactics, and fleets.
« Reply #8 on: August 26, 2013, 11:44:27 AM »

I find hounds to be pretty good against pirate ships, but seriously lacking against mid and high tech. I think an Apogee or Aurora (or something bigger...) could murder a near infinite quantity of hounds...

I mainly use destroyers and a capital ship (me). The destroyers are large enough to take care of themselves and fast enough to keep up with a player boosted capital.
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icepick37

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Re: Tactics, and fleets.
« Reply #9 on: August 26, 2013, 01:41:28 PM »


Icepick would ;)

If I had a max fleet, ya i would just adjust the ratio of hyper v drivers to heavy maulers.  Another slightly more difficult tactic to pull off (due to rarity) is the mass shuttle, antimatter blasters and ion-cannons for the win.
Why yes I would, haha. Hound fleet is underwhelming, though. AI never really knows how to not get shot to pieces.  :/  Still fun to try, though, heh.

Shuttle is so OP, haha. Mostly because it only requires one crew.  :)
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Wyvern

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Re: Tactics, and fleets.
« Reply #10 on: August 26, 2013, 02:04:02 PM »

Game start, I get a shuttle.  Yes, a shuttle - I always answer "did something else" so I can spend points where I want, and that leaves me with Hound or Shuttle as my starting options.  Hound doesn't have shields.  And the shuttle has a skeleton crew of one - buy a single veteran or elite crew, and suddenly your shuttle is that much stronger.  Initial skill selection, I go for combat aptitude with +3 helmsmanship skill; the extra speed isn't much, but it's useful, and that's a skill I'll always want later.

You can't take hounds in a shuttle - they've got too much range and speed and will run away before you can kill them - but you can take a lasher or a buffalo II, even if they come with a wing of fighters.  Don't attack fleets with more than one frigate + one fighter squadron, though, and especially don't attack hound + anything else.

Also, the shuttle can carry a *lot* of spare crew & marines - and even if you take massive hull damage, you can only lose one crew per fight.  Battle until you capture something or can afford to buy some support - I prefer a Vigilance with LRMs and a heavy blaster (or mining blaster if that's what the store has) - invest in vents on it.

Put further aptitude points into tech up to level five - you want more ordnance points and better auto-aim, and especially the range boost from gunnery implants level five.

And then, when you've got say 40k in total funds (including what you'd gain from selling your frigates), go buy an Apogee.  Give it 2x heavy blaster, dedicated targeting core, 30 vents, 2x burst PD laser, unstable injector, and whatever else you feel like.  And now you can take on any pirate fleet (though some of the larger ones may be a bit tricky - save before engaging until you're sure you know what you're doing).  Invest further aptitude points into combat skills - see my post here for some thoughts on what skills you want and possible final builds.

...And if you want more of a fleet than just one Apogee, I suggest designing any supporting vessel variants to focus on survival; you don't need them to kill things, just keep stuff busy or hold nav nodes that you aren't near.
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icepick37

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Re: Tactics, and fleets.
« Reply #11 on: August 26, 2013, 02:22:54 PM »


You can't take hounds in a shuttle - they've got too much range and speed and will run away before you can kill them - but you can take a lasher or a buffalo II, even if they come with a wing of fighters.  Don't attack fleets with more than one frigate + one fighter squadron, though, and especially don't attack hound + anything else.


Pssssh. You have not tried hard enough. Try a build with dual tac lasers. You'll need speed, but you can wear them down. It's not easy, though.

EDIT: To more directly answer the question: I play with lots of starting ships, though shuttle and hound are my favorite (I'm kind of known for loving the hound, heh. It's not my fault it's scrappy and awesome!).

I usually save up for a falcon (yes I am weird like that, too). I really like it's speed and layout. And it's not that much more than a destroyer, but you get cruiser level upgrades, which are BOSS. What I stick on there varies. You can make pretty silly things work on most ships if you'll learn your limits.
« Last Edit: August 26, 2013, 02:26:54 PM by icepick37 »
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Wyvern

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Re: Tactics, and fleets.
« Reply #12 on: August 26, 2013, 02:35:45 PM »


You can't take hounds in a shuttle - they've got too much range and speed and will run away before you can kill them - but you can take a lasher or a buffalo II, even if they come with a wing of fighters.  Don't attack fleets with more than one frigate + one fighter squadron, though, and especially don't attack hound + anything else.


Pssssh. You have not tried hard enough. Try a build with dual tac lasers. You'll need speed, but you can wear them down. It's not easy, though.
And how do you get that speed at game start?  Hm... maybe an ion cannon would work well if you're hunting hounds.  Would make it harder to take on lashers, though.  That's why I don't go dual tac lasers, actually - it's strong against hounds, but you can't take down a lasher with that.

Oh hey, and I forgot to mention: one good possible cheap upgrade: buy an Omen, give it an antimatter blaster and capacitors and vents and hull mods and put it on autopilot.  Very effective against pirates.  (I use autopilot with it because the AI is much much better at controlling the Omen's shields than I am.  If you can install a front shield emitter, autopilot is no longer needed.)
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icepick37

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Re: Tactics, and fleets.
« Reply #13 on: August 26, 2013, 02:41:43 PM »

And how do you get that speed at game start?  Hm... maybe an ion cannon would work well if you're hunting hounds.  Would make it harder to take on lashers, though.  That's why I don't go dual tac lasers, actually - it's strong against hounds, but you can't take down a lasher with that.
Unstable injector (I believe you start with that unlocked)!  :D  You can't actually keep up with the hound, but you can give it fits anyway. And yeah, you'll have a hard time with lashers.  :/  Can't remember what I do for those. Hounds are usually plentiful enough that I get help sooner rather than later for lashers, heh.
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Wyvern

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Re: Tactics, and fleets.
« Reply #14 on: August 27, 2013, 10:43:12 AM »

Okay, okay.  So, "can't take hounds" was an overstatement.  I still don't think it's worth the effort, though.  :-P
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