Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: 1 2 [3]

Author Topic: How to field large Fleets?  (Read 14274 times)

Plantissue

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1231
    • View Profile
Re: How to field large Fleets?
« Reply #30 on: September 05, 2015, 02:14:11 PM »

@ Megas:
Again, you assume too much. You assume the player has a Hyperion. You assume that they have Combat 10. If you are hunting down bounty fleets and you care about money, you aren't in the end game. If you can chain Hyperions, you are at the end game, and if you are in the end game, I have to say again that, it's only a short period of time before you exhaust every possible avenue for fun and just start a new game, another mod, or wait for a new patch to come out.

Does it matter if the shade has three of its mounts as energy only? It has 2 universals, and chances are you would want to use ion cannons or antimmatter blasters or reaper launchers. Not as perfectly set up as 4 perfectly lined up universals, but pretty close in effectiveness. The Shade can fire 2 AM blasters at the same time, phase and vent just like the afflictor can. Heck, with your end-game-maxed-everything-out-skills, it can 4 AM blaster, phase away safely and vent.  Sure, it has worse flux and vent stats, not not that much significantly so, an initial 500 flux difference and 100 vent, a 20% and 33% increase respectively which decreases as the more OP you have available to spend. That said a major disadvantage is that the Shade does have less OP, but it is enough OP to do your litmus test of effectiveness of firing 2 AM blaster, phase, retreat to safety and vent. I don't see much point for small ballistics either. No small ballistics have enough instant damage to make use of phase cloak as well as AM blaster, and IR Pulse laser dps and OP cost is good enough to take advantage of shieldless armourless dps. If all the other frigates are good, then so too is the Shade.

Ok, lets say that tempests are as rare as shade and affictors. Point still stands. By the time you have say 5 of them, you probably have a capital ship like the Paragon long beforehand. Mostly because every major ship yard seem to stock a capital ship.

When I do not have a Hyperion, I grab a Dominator, Onslaught, or Paragon flagship from the nearest storage base to the bounty fleet, fight the bounty fleet with my frigate fleet led by big flagship, put the big ship back in storage after I win, then travel the stars as a frigate or Atlas fleet."

Yes? That's the point I am making? That you can't assume that he would have a Hyperion? But what are you doing travelling the stars? There's only 6 star systems in vanilla at the moment. What exactly are you travelling for? It can't be for bounty fleets, because you just put your combat ship back in storage, unless you have one in storage every star system. It can't be for trade, because events aren't exactly flying thick and fast. What exactly are you spending that time doing? You might as well go hunt down another bounty fleet, of which there are always 3 of, in 3 systems, which means you are practically always travelling with your big flagship.

As for using disposable ships for boarding, I'm not disagreeing with that. When you board ships, and it isn't your first game, you have already decided that the overall lost in money is worth it. I question using Lashers and Hammerheads as disposable boarding ships, when far better and cheaper alternatives are available.

I have never said that you said all ships were disposable. I question that you recommend any ship for combat for use as a disposable ship. They are either cost effective or they are not. There is no disposable. Any loss is a loss except for fighters with a flight deck.

"Only by endgame do I fight deserter bounty fleets, and by then, I have money to burn."

I wonder about your journey to the end game. Especially since once you get there, it is boring. Bounty fleets of all sizes and prizes are part of the game. No point racing to the end game if by the end there is nothing to do.

If you can deploy lashers in overwhelming numbers, then you can employ any ship in overwhelming numbers. Might as well employ wolfs insteadl the supply difference is small change when you can deploy mass amounts of anything. Heck, in order to deploy Lashers in overwhelming numbers, a lot of time would had been spent on buiding up small amounts or storing something you say is rubbish at combat.

"You can be surprised how quickly millions can be spent.  When shopping for rare ships, player often needs to buy out the entire shipyard so that the shop can refresh its stock with more ships, hopefully with the rare Hyperion or other ship the player really wants instead of yet another junk Hammerhead for sale.  This is like gambling from Diablo 2."
It'll probably be faster to farm and run across hyperions than to gamble for elites. Either way, as I said, it would take a lot of time and luck.

Also, even with unlimited money, not every ship is available in sufficient quantities. I cannot build a Hyperion only fleet even if I want to, because they are too rare. There are also a few ships that are not for sale, such as Astral (no high-tech 10^6 market available) and Valkyrie (may not even be enabled)."
Yes, you can't seem to get them, therefore tens of millions is still enough that you can experiment with every available fleet composition.

I'm not disagreeing that the Enforcer and Medusa are excellent ships. They are rightfully excellent recommendations for destroyers. I think Sunder is too, but I am fine with your disagreeing with that.

« Last Edit: September 06, 2015, 04:48:31 AM by Plantissue »
Logged

SafariJohn

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3010
    • View Profile
Re: How to field large Fleets?
« Reply #31 on: September 05, 2015, 06:05:27 PM »

Please don't reply inside a quote like that. It can be very hard to read.

If you really must, use colored text for your replies so they stand out.
Logged

Thaago

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 7174
  • Harpoon Affectionado
    • View Profile
Re: How to field large Fleets?
« Reply #32 on: September 05, 2015, 06:19:08 PM »

and if you need to, you can break and restart quotes with their tags - [ quote ] to start and [ / quote ] to stop. (removing the spaces to make them work)
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: How to field large Fleets?
« Reply #33 on: September 05, 2015, 06:49:40 PM »

Yes, that is too hard to read.  To answer some questions...

I hunt bounty fleets in endgame because I like to fight big battles.  Also, if I want to have high relations with every non-pirate faction (for greatest market access), then the only thing I can fight are bounty fleets.  Fortunately, deserter fleets can have ships from any one faction, and are under the pirate flag.  I mean, if I want to fight a faction, I just wait until a deserter fleet appears.  The primary reward of combat and trade is experience.  I like to see how high I can level before I get bored and give up (or resort to cheating).  My best game went to level 74; most of that XP came from trade, even though I fought nearly every bounty fleet that spawned.  I could have pushed it higher, but then I am not working on other things with other games I want to do.

What am I doing traveling the stars?  Fighting bounty fleets and exploiting trade events!  Events are spread throughout the sector, and not confined to Corvus.  This is why high burn speed is very important in 0.65.  Otherwise, you will spend a lot of time in hyperspace, and may miss events (and rewards).

Unlike many players, my idea of fun is to utterly crush the enemy in battle.  I find the journey to endgame tedious.  The time I play from 1 to 40, I feel weak and the game is in tutorial mode.  Game at 50+, that is when the game truly begins, and I get to smash the enemy in big epic fights.

My journey to endgame?  I fight pirates in Corvus with a small frigate fleet until about level 35+.  Occasionally, I might be able to exploit a food shortage.

It is probably faster to find Hyperion in non-bounty fleets, but if you fight them, you kill reputation and lose access to markets.  If I attack Diktat's Lion's Guard for a Hyperion, reputation goes to Hostile, and I can neither sell tons of food to Sindria or Volturn (prime food run targets) nor buy big ships (Conquests, Atlas) or rare weapons (anything heavy) for a long time.  The biggest rewards come from exploiting markets, and killing anything that is not a pirate ruins that.
Logged

Plantissue

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1231
    • View Profile
Re: How to field large Fleets?
« Reply #34 on: September 06, 2015, 04:41:43 AM »

Sorry guys. I messed up the formating.

The question was't why you are fighting bounty fleets, but what was you doing before you amassed that 8 figure sum you have, before you can have that hyperion. If you put back your big flagship back into storage, how can you be travelling to fight bounty fleets? Bounty fleets stay for 2 months. You got plenty of time to take them all down one after another. Unless you have parked them in system, in which case it is probably time to start a new game. There are only so many events that can be taken advantage of with 6 systems.

Yeah, I too hunt pirates. I personally prefer wolfs. And phase ships of either type if I can. I regard wolfs as so good they they are superior to most destroyers and cruisers. The phase skimmer is that good. Thing is the original comment I was replying to was that you said Capital ships were expensive to deploy. They aren't, simply because you will save up deployment cost by not having to replace as many losses. To reply that to get the rare Hyperion isn't an answer to that it is not an otion that is available till you do have one.

I tried levelling up from almost purely fighting bounty fleets. I don't see why you have to wait till you have amassed millions and a Hyperion before starting to do so.

I'm not sure why you think I have talked about killing any non pirates though I recognise that I had presented my previous post in an unreadable manner.
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: How to field large Fleets?
« Reply #35 on: September 06, 2015, 07:06:36 AM »

Quote
If you put back your big flagship back into storage, how can you be travelling to fight bounty fleets? Bounty fleets stay for 2 months. You got plenty of time to take them all down one after another. Unless you have parked them in system, in which case it is probably time to start a new game. There are only so many events that can be taken advantage of with 6 systems.
I have storage in all systems once I tour the sector at endgame, and some effective ship types (e.g., Onslaught, Enforcer) are ubiquitous.  Say, I have bounty fights in Eos, I usually do not import slow ships from elsewhere.  I buy ships and leave them in storage.  I only need or want big ships when I fight deserter fleets that are sitting on a planet.  Anything else I may want to fight in deep space can probably be killed by a few frigates (and many will run away if your fleet is too big).  Thus, for interstellar travel, I do not need a big battleship (or anything bigger than a frigate) slowing my fleet down or eating lots.  Yes, that means ships are parked in a system.  No, that does not mean it is time to start a game; for me, that means the game is just beginning!  I get somewhat bored until endgame, due to lack of power, then I have fun at levels 50+.

Wolves are good.  I like Wolves because they are reasonably powerful and common for a frigate.  They are great for soloing small pirate scout fleets that would flee from anything with more than 10 DP.  Whenever I use a frigate horde.  I have at least ten Wolves, and I often have twenty or more!  Occasionally, I use Vigilance instead for overwhelming Pilum spam.  Sometimes, I use Lashers and/or Cerberus because they are more CR efficient.  When you deploy forty or so frigates, you have so much firepower that it does not matter too much what frigates you use as long as you can destroy that enemy flagship with Combat 10 before it can get a shot off against your AI ships.

Quote
I tried levelling up from almost purely fighting bounty fleets. I don't see why you have to wait till you have amassed millions and a Hyperion before starting to do so.
I do not, because I do not need to, early on.  My fleet is small and weak enough to attack the numerous stray pirates (scouts, patrols, carrier fleets, armadas) that infest Hegemony space in Corvus, especially when Barad gets nears Jangala, and it is profitable during general bounties.  I can do this up until level is in the 30s,  By then, I have a million or so credits and I can look for Atlas to haul stuff and ride the gravy train.  I do not need to wait for Hyperion to hunt endgame bounty fleets; I use Medusa or Wolves (until bounties reach Combat 10), then Dominator or Onslaught flagship until I get Hyperion.

I do not get eight-figure credits from combat alone.  Trading is much more profitable than combat.  When I am ready to exploit events anywhere, I circle the sector clockwise from Corvus to Magec/Achaman to Eos to Askonia and back to Corvus.  Arcadia occasionally has profitable events, and I may stop by along the way.  Valhalla is a no-go because it is in a corner of nowhere, and the system is a big wasteland with small (mostly non-military) markets that have nothing other markets do not have, and trading at a market in Valhalla angers one faction (Hegemony or Tri-Tachyon).
« Last Edit: September 06, 2015, 11:07:07 AM by Megas »
Logged
Pages: 1 2 [3]