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Author Topic: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors  (Read 8053 times)

Baqar79

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Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« on: November 27, 2015, 07:51:49 PM »

Hull mod suggestion 1 "Hardened Shields":
It seems to be priced a bit too expensive for what it actually does (I've tried using this hullmod quite a bit, but it never seems to be worth the cost).

For example, a Medusa has an excelent shield that converts damage -> flux at a rate of *0.6
If we then add hardened shields we can reduce the flux/damage ratio down to *0.45, but it costs 12 Ordinance to employ this mod.

Now let us hit the shields with different weapons:

Tachyon Lance (2249 Damage, ignoring EMP):
2249 * 0.6 = 1349 Flux generated (i'm not sure if this is right, since it is technically a beam weapon, maybe the flux could be less?)
2249 * 0.45 = 1012 Flux generated

Heavy Blaster (500 Damage):
500 * 0.6 = 300 Flux generated
500 * 0.45 = 225 Flux generated

The situation improves for low efficiency shields though; for example with the Sunder:

Tachyon Lance (2249 Damage, ignoring EMP):
2249 * 1.2 = 2699 Flux generated
2249 * 0.9 = 2024 Flux generated

Heavy Blaster (500 Damage):
500 * 1.2 = 600 Flux generated
500 * 0.9 = 450 Flux generated

Still 12 Ordinance points, 120 additional flux dissipation or 2400 more flux capacity is quite a significant tradeoff.

We could fix this by decreasing the cost, or increasing it's efficiency, but I also thought it might be a cool idea to have the hullmod instead reduce a single type of damage like kinetic, down from 200% to 100% or even 75% depending on balance.

Hull mod Suggestion 2 "Blast Doors":
I will just start by saying, I utilize these in all of my ships; I like to preserve the life of crew members on my vessels and i'm rewarded by a larger pool of more experienced crew as a result.  But it is a pretty expensive hullmod and I think it's pretty easy to treat crew members as disposable (especially later in the game). 

I think with how much money is going around in mid-late game, I would like to see experienced crew cost *significantly* more to recruit (Veterans costing 10x or more the cost they are at now).  In addition increase the fatality rate on damaged ships, or at least the threshold at which this comes into effect. 

For example losing 50 Elite crew on a significantly damaged Falcon is going to cost you $50,000 to replace (I'm not sure if you can purchase Elite crew...but assuming we purchase 50 new veterans @ $1000 each).  With blast doors and an officer with damage control we could of reduced this down to 13 (assuming it works 50 crew members * 0.5 (blast doors) * 0.5 (damage control) = 12.5) a cost of $13,000 to replace.

Other:
There are also some other hullmods which I can't seem to find a good use for, but that is probably due to the way I play (and i'm still learning!):

Integrated Point Defence AI - Seems to be a bit of a liability as your high damage weapons are constantly being distracted by tiny missiles (SRM's, Annihilators..)

Augmented Engines - I used these quite a bit in the previous version, but with the new sensor mechanic, the penalties are rather extreme, considering you can just use Unstable injectors for better effect (though without the burn bonus)

Heavy Armour - Pretty expensive for a fixed amount of armour; more valuable for weakly armoured ships, but those ships seemed to benefit more often by distributing ordinance points elsewhere.  Perhaps changing this to a % improvement might make this a bit better.  For example Hound's have 400 stock armour, I can add an extra 100 armour by choosing 'heavy armour' for 8 points; or add an extra 40 armour by choosing Armoured weapon mounts for 3 points which gives me better weapon protection and I don't lose out on ship manuverability which could be considered a better tradeoff to the slower turret tracking.

Front Shield Generator - Seems a bit of a liability since those ships that don't have shields tend to be heavily armoured instead.  With this equipped on a hound, you are going to have a bad day as that hound will avoid taking damage to it's hull, only to end up overloaded and vulnerable in battle.  Perhaps if the AI for hounds would only put up the shield for serious threats to damage, it may be useful.  Alternatively making it much more efficient might help make these useful.

Solar Shielding - This is new, so i'm not sure what this is about.  It sounds pretty cool if we might be visiting systems that have serious radiation problems (black hole acretion disc, neutron stars, etc).  At the moment though, I guess that 10% damage reduction from beam weapons helps a bit, but it doesn't really seem worth it at the moment.

For most of the rest i've found them useful at one time or another, but it helps that they tend to be cheaper then the above hullmods.
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Schwartz

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Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« Reply #1 on: November 27, 2015, 08:31:45 PM »

You said it yourself. Hardened Shields are intended as an upgrade to low-efficiency shields and they're quite excellent even on the better ones - if you can spare the OP. 1/4th (hard) flux shaved off every single shot is quite significant.

Blast Doors could use a makeover, agreed. Crew aren't just disposable - they're a complete non-issue now. If you have enough Elites to crew your ships, simply fill up the entire rest of your 'crew tank' with cheap rookies. They won't impact combat performance but will gain XP quickly. You'll never run out of Elites. I kinda feel like this needs looking at again to give crew some kind of downside. Supply cost wasn't *horrible*.

IPDAI is excellent if you know when and how to use it, it's just not a general upgrade for all configurations. AE is now too expensive, agreed. I've never used it in 0.7. Heavy Armor is fine the way it is. Making it work off percentages would be extremely overpowered on high-armor ships and underwhelming on the rest. Front Shield Generator is what it is, a makeshift generator. It can keep Hounds alive in mid and late-game engagements. Solar Shielding is underwhelming because its main selling point is an effect that's extremely situational and avoided if you're a decent navigator. It would be *extremely cool* to turn this into a hullmod that removed shields from the ship but gave it a flat 25% or so beam resistance, as well as the solar perk.
« Last Edit: November 27, 2015, 08:35:13 PM by Schwartz »
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Baqar79

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Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« Reply #2 on: November 27, 2015, 09:21:05 PM »

You said it yourself. Hardened Shields are intended as an upgrade to low-efficiency shields and they're quite excellent even on the better ones - if you can spare the OP. 1/4th (hard) flux shaved off every single shot is quite significant.

It seems a little expensive though if you were to consider swapping that shield for 2400 flux capacity which works out to be about a 32% increase in the Sunders flux capacity (7500 -> 9900).  You in effect get more hard flux capacity by going with capacitors than choosing the hardened shields.  Since a flux pool is also useful for powering flux heavy weapons, it seems you are better off not using Hardened shield even on the sunder.


Blast Doors could use a makeover, agreed. Crew aren't just disposable - they're a complete non-issue now. If you have enough Elites to crew your ships, simply fill up the entire rest of your 'crew tank' with cheap rookies. They won't impact combat performance but will gain XP quickly. You'll never run out of Elites. I kinda feel like this needs looking at again to give crew some kind of downside. Supply cost wasn't *horrible*.

Well...for one who collects lots of crew, the changes actually caused quite a drop in my supply usage :D

IPDAI is excellent if you know when and how to use it, it's just not a general upgrade for all configurations. AE is now too expensive, agreed. I've never used it in 0.7. Heavy Armor is fine the way it is. Making it work off percentages would be extremely overpowered on high-armor ships and underwhelming on the rest. Front Shield Generator is what it is, a makeshift generator. It can keep Hounds alive in mid and late-game engagements. Solar Shielding is underwhelming because its main selling point is an effect that's extremely situational and avoided if you're a decent navigator. It would be *extremely cool* to turn this into a hullmod that removed shields from the ship but gave it a flat 25% or so beam resistance, as well as the solar perk.

Re: IPDAI: Yeah, haven't used it enough to really know how to use it correctly; but if you or someone else does, where do you find this hullmod useful?

Re: Heavy Armor: I dug up my old post on the armour mechanic to try and recall how it works, but I seem to be unsure on this.  So I guess I can't really comment until i'm certain I know how it works.  Do you use it yourself?

Re: Front shield:  I find my hounds end up spending a lot of time overloaded in simulated battle; though I would think that if you were manually controlling a hound with this configuration it would be a lot more useful.  Since I haven't used this configuration outside the simulator; from your point of view, what kind of situations did you find having the front shield generator to be of benefit?

Cool idea for the Solar Shielding hullmod, i'm all for weapon/ability differentiation.  The more unique weapons/abilities are, the more interesting the configurations become.  This is what made Master of Orion II so fun for me.
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Schwartz

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Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« Reply #3 on: November 27, 2015, 09:57:22 PM »

For Hardened Shields, you also have to consider that 1/4th less flux translates to a theoretic increase for both flux capacity *and* flux vent rate. If you were to sink 12 OP into capacitors instead of buying Hardened Shields, it would take you longer to dissipate than it would 100% of a Hardened Shields build with the same number of vents.

I played around with 'high-tech' Hounds in the old version with SS+ a bit. They seemed to do really well. Hounds are among the fastest ships in the game, and if they take part in fleet battles then they have the advantage of being able to always disengage and vent quickly. One-on-one against a fast enemy, a Hound will have much less breathing room.

Heavy Armor: Yeah, I use it a lot. The downside is very slight, and phase ships as well as bigger ships with spare OP in particular will benefit. Armor doesn't scale linearly, as in, the damage resistance effect will get better and better the higher your armor value is. It doesn't do much for some ships. Mostly those that already have abysmal armor rating but great shields. Hyperion will be made of paper whether you add 100 armor or not. Ships that are fast and stay out of the brawl zone also can go without it, like the Heron. Which is a bit short on OP anyway.

IPDAI: Useful on ships that have lots of Tac Lasers with +gyro speed. Railguns are also extremely accurate and able to take out some missiles. To be honest, I don't use IPDAI as much anymore in this version. Reason being that dealing with missiles is always a secondary to killing the thing that's firing the missiles. And Tac Lasers without IPDAI are much less fussy and will concentrate on fighters / frigates - which they're extremely good against.
« Last Edit: November 27, 2015, 10:09:19 PM by Schwartz »
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Clockwork Owl

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Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« Reply #4 on: November 27, 2015, 10:33:47 PM »

Solar shielding is indeed too situational to be worth its OP. Situations you're going to benefit from it is limited - you run out of fuels in hyperspace and at critical CR, you're forced to run into a star's corona in some chase scenario, or you're against a TT fleet/renegade TT officers.

How about 'Environmental Shielding' which decreases CR loss from any terrain effect(or cancel out CR loss at all at increased OP)? We have hyperspace storm, and we have lots of them.
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Wyvern

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Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« Reply #5 on: November 27, 2015, 10:35:21 PM »

Kinda disagree on Hardened Shields - it's at its best on ships that had good shields to start with.  That .6 to .45 may seem like "oh, it's only giving me .15 better shields" - but it's actually doing exactly what it says: reducing incoming damage by a full 25%.  Sure, you might be able to tank more total damage if you go with capacitors on some ships - but Hardened Shields makes it 25% easier / faster to vent off the damage you've taken; a ship with strong shields and this hull mod and the 20% hard flux dissipation perk can often go an entire battle without needing to lower its shields.

Augmented Engines: The current sensor penalties aren't as bad as they seem on paper - as long as you're only using it on a few ships.  It is, however, as you say, no longer a no-brainer upgrade for every hull in your fleet, which is probably a good thing.

IPDAI: This only really works with tactical lasers and advanced turret gyros (and not advanced optics - you can't take the turning penalty with this setup!)  Works reasonably well as PD for the ship it's on; works great as fleet support for ships nearby.

Heavy Armor: The actual damage equations for armor mean that the more armor you have, the more each point of armor does for you.  The fixed value works fine, and I try to make room for it on my most heavily armored ships.  (Try being the operative term; my XIV Onslaught just doesn't have the spare ordnance points to let me install this.  But it does see use on my Dominator.)

Front Shield: The shield this provides just isn't good enough, imo.  Could use some improvement.

Solar Shielding: Haven't actually tried this in game, but it does seem a bit underwhelming.  I don't really like the notion of situational swapping of hull mods, so I think this one could probably use a slightly stronger constant effect - maybe if it also added a reduction in sensor profile?


Now the hull mods that I find most useless are the Flux Coil Adjunct and Flux Distributor.  These saw some usage back when you could get to 150% normal ordnance points, but right now they're just relics of a bygone age, too expensive to be worth using.  Oh, and the fact that they've got relatively high skill unlocks doesn't help either; by the time you can even consider installing a Flux Distributor, you're almost to the point of being able to just install that many extra vents anyway.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Baqar79

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Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« Reply #6 on: November 27, 2015, 10:54:13 PM »

Thank you for answering, it's helping me to think through my points a little more clearly.

For Hardened Shields, you also have to consider that 1/4th less flux translates to a theoretic increase for both flux capacity *and* flux vent rate. If you were to sink 12 OP into capacitors instead of buying Hardened Shields, it would take you longer to dissipate than it would 100% of a Hardened Shields build with the same number of vents.

It did cross my mind that the flux venting would take longer instead of using hardened shields, but there are a lot of cases where you are much better off investing in more vents/flux capacity:

Let us take another destroyer class, with a terrible shield generator; the Condor:
Dam/Flux: 1.2
Flux dissipation: 110
Flux Capacity: 2200

Once again Hardened shields cost 12 ordinance points.  Let's split those points between Dissipation and capacity:
Flux disipation: 170 (55% increase)
Flux capacity: 3400 (55% increase)

Or hardened shields for a 25% decrease in the amount of damage taken.  Both should have similar dissipation rates since Flux capacity and dissipation were increased equally.

Thinking about it more there should be some benefit to much bigger ships with a large flux pool with decent flux dissipation.  For example the Paragon:

Dam/Flux: 0.6
Flux dissipation: 1250
Flux capacity: 25000

Hardened Shield cost 30 points, distributing these:
Flux dissipation: 1400 (12% increase)
Flux capacity: 28000 (12% increase)

Or hardened shields would give us a 25% decrease in damage taken.  Even then it's still not a flat out advantage, since by increasing the flux dissipation and flux capacity equally the paragon will build flux slower when firing weapons.

On the otherhand, against small fast moving target that attacking (ie fighters, frigates), where we aren't really utilizing many of our main flux draining weapons, I can see the Paragon coming off better against those types of attacks with hardened shields.

Still, with ships with small flux pools and dissipation, you seem better off swapping your hardened shield for an equal increase of flux dissipation and flux capacity.

I played around with 'high-tech' Hounds in the old version with SS+ a bit. They seemed to do really well. Hounds are among the fastest ships in the game, and if they take part in fleet battles then they have the advantage of being able to always disengage and vent quickly. One-on-one against a fast enemy, a Hound will have much less breathing room.

I never even touched hounds until this update.  I tried the Cerberus and was dissappointed "all shield less ships are rubbish" I said to myself, but then I found one of those 'A' variant hounds at the shop and purchased one to try out.  I've been a convert ever since.  I've actually recently given up on SO on them, but SO + Unstable injector is pretty fun to see how fast you can go  ;D


Heavy Armor: Yeah, I use it a lot. The downside is very slight, and phase ships as well as bigger ships with spare OP in particular will benefit. Armor doesn't scale linearly, as in, the damage resistance effect will get better and better the higher your armor value is. It doesn't do much for some ships. Mostly those that already have abysmal armor rating but great shields. Hyperion will be made of paper whether you add 100 armor or not. Ships that are fast and stay out of the brawl zone also can go without it, like the Heron. Which is a bit short on OP anyway.

IPDAI: Useful on ships that have lots of Tac Lasers with +gyro speed. Railguns are also extremely accurate and able to take out some missiles. To be honest, I don't use IPDAI as much anymore in this version. Reason being that dealing with missiles is always a secondary to killing the thing that's firing the missiles. And Tac Lasers without IPDAI are much less fussy and will concentrate on fighters / frigates - which they're extremely good against.

Interesting, thanks for your feedback, i'll play around a bit more with heavy armour once I get around to figuring out exactly how damage is applied.
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Thaago

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Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« Reply #7 on: November 27, 2015, 10:55:03 PM »

Re: Hardened Shields
I think about it this way: the number of shots needed to take down shields is (flux pool)/(damage per shot). This hullmod makes it (flux pool)/.75*(damage per shot).

The difference in the number of shots taken is greater for better shielded ships than poorer ones, even though the efficiency looks like it changes less: the hullmod is better for high tech ships than low tech ships.

Re: Heavy Armor

The percent damage of a shot that gets through is (shot damage)/(shot damage + armor rating). Eg: if your shot does 200 points to armor, then against a ship with 200 armor it does 50% (100 damage), against 1000 armor is does 16.6%. I believe the minimum percentage damage that a shot can do is 15%? Its in the config file but I forget it. The armor of the hit square and those around it are averaged to determine the armor rating.

Heavy Armor analysis, because its a little harder than shields:
Spoiler
Lets compare an Enforcer and a Medusa getting heavy armor. The Medusa goes from 300 to 500 armor, the Enforcer from 750 to 950. The hypothetical 200 damage shot on the medusa originally did 80 damage. After heavy armor, it does 57 damage. On an enforcer, the shot originally did 42 damage and now does 35 damage.

Interpreting this result is actually really tricky! On the one hand, on a Medusa the armor has a bigger difference in damage (23) than on an enforcer (7). But, because the Medusa has lighter armor to begin with, the Heavy armor added 3 extra hits worth of toughness (it will go from 500 armor to 300 in 3 hits). It also takes 3 hits to go from 300 to 0, so Heavy Armor doubled the armor vs our hypothetical test shot. On an Enforcer, because it started with heavier armor, the Heavy Armor adds 5.25 shots of toughness, bringing the number of total number of shots taken to around 15.

So, on a Medusa Heavy Armor doubles the number of hits that can be taken, while on an Enforcer it only increased it by 1/2. However, it only buys 3 hits on a Medusa, while it buys 5 on the Enforcer. To me the absolute difference is more important: Heavy Armor is better on more heavily armored ships than on lighter armored ships.

[close]
Tldr: Heavy Armor is proportionately better on lightly armored ships, but gives a larger absolute difference on heavily armored ships. Still, I put it on absolutely everything once I have it.
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Cik

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Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« Reply #8 on: November 27, 2015, 11:11:27 PM »

ditto. once you are at high tech (and why wouldn't you be, if you have at least one cruiser?) that putting a few systems on everything doesn't seem out of reach. i put heavy armor on every line ship i have, and it seems especially good on the hegemony line ships (enforcer, dominator, onslaught) which are already tough but nigh invincible to anything but heavily concentrated torpedo fire after the upgrade.
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Baqar79

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Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« Reply #9 on: November 27, 2015, 11:24:22 PM »

Thanks Thaago, your post was pretty insightful!

The part in damage calcs I was confused about was how damage was applied to armour, before it hits the hull.  When you take hull damage it starts of purely armour based and then as it gets seriously damaged it mixes both armour and hull, then finally with no armour left we are just taking hull damage.

You cleared up that damage is applied to armour directly first, but I can't seem to get my head around what is happening when we are taking both hull and armour damage.  I'll try and look over the wiki and some other posts to see if I can fit it all together.
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Serenitis

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Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« Reply #10 on: November 28, 2015, 02:32:06 AM »

It would be nice if Insulated Engines gave you a passive reduction to your sensor signature which just happened to be enough to mitigate the penalty of Augmented Engines.
Or at least a decent portion of it.

On the topic of unused mods: Omni Shield Conversion
I don't think I have ever used this mod.
Way too expensive considering it cuts the shield arc in half, and the only ships that could really benefit from it can't afford the OP to fit it.
Cutting the shield arc is not a problem, but the more than prohibitive cost is.
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TJJ

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Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« Reply #11 on: November 28, 2015, 03:38:14 AM »

1)
Don't forget Hardened Shields is multiplicative with additional flux capacity.
For ships whose primary defence is shielding (and thus favour investing in flux capacity), it's a top-tier hull mod.

2)
It's true that Heavy Armour is worse than Armoured Weapon Mounts for many ships.
However, armour's effectiveness isn't linear; more armour gives higher damage reduction, so doubled armour will last 'more than' twice as long.
(precisely how much 'more than' depends upon your base armour, and the damage level of the projectiles hitting you.)

3)
The hull mods that have least value in my eyes, are those that give advantage outside of the combat.
When you're being hammered by an Onslaught, you don't care about the economic or logistics advantage a hull mod might give you on the campaign map - your primary concern is not dying.

That's why I think the Gryphon's ship system will never be balanced; it essentially allows you to directly convert money into combat strength, bypassing every other balancing factor.
The only other way money can be converted into combat strength is through better hulls, better weapons, and officers - each of which have their own balancing mechanisms in place.
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Megas

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Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« Reply #12 on: November 28, 2015, 05:54:00 AM »

I still put Augmented Engines on nearly everything, the extra top speed in combat and +1 burn speed make it a no-brainer.  The sensor penalty is aggravating, but endgame threats have transponders on (except bounty fleets that usually sit on their home planet), which makes it a non-issue.  Profile penalty is painful when you want to sneak but manageable by going dark, which cuts burn speed.  I suspect the +1 burn is why we have the sensor and profile penalties.  I suggest removing the sensor penalty, but leave the profile penalty in.

Blast Doors is mildly useful, but crew is disposable, and either Automated Repair Unit or Hardened Subsystems have higher priority.

Front Shield Generator is must-have if you want your Hound or Cerberus to fight in battle.  Without shields, enemies with long-range beams or missiles will kill them fast.  It requires +30% OP and Optimized Assembly perk to get enough OP to squeeze everything you need to fight.  Back in 0.65, Cerberus was a better combatant than Lasher.  Better armor, weapons (it can kite!), and ship system.  It is an endgame hullmod.

Hardened Shields is great when you can fit it in, and have Advanced Physics skill.  I almost never put points in that skill (+1% to max flux per point is lame), and do not use it.

I never use Heavy Armor.  Aside from being in a skill I never put points in, I think many ships do not turn quickly enough.  Heavy Armor cuts maneuverability.  This is bad, especially for bigger ships.  I value speed more than durability.

The main problem with Integrated Point Defense AI is it works well only with beam weapons.  Non-beam weapons miss too much.  It might be more usable with Gunnery Implants 10.  In other words, it is little more than a Tactical Laser boost.

Omni Shield Emitter is too expensive.

While I have not used Solar Shielding, I can say that I never fought in a star's corona.  Coronas are a bad place to be, yet easy to avoid.
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Thaago

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Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« Reply #13 on: November 28, 2015, 11:37:57 AM »

@ Megas
Interesting - I'm the opposite of you. I much prefer armor over mobility for AI ships - I don't consider augmented engines/unstable injector worth it for cruisers or destroyers (frigates need it because they can't tank anything, and capitals need the burn speed). My battle line of enforcers has something like 1400 armor each - each of them takes truly massive punishment to take down.
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Megas

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Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors
« Reply #14 on: November 28, 2015, 11:48:42 AM »

In my case, either cruisers or destroyers are my biggest ships, and they need Augmented Engines to keep up with destroyers or frigates.  I only recently earned enough credits to support an Onslaught comfortably.  Even then, I prefer to leave Onslaught at home because I need a tug to put its speed at 9, and tugs and capitals are fuel hogs.

I build all of my ships as if I can pilot them anytime, in case I want to do the chain-flagship tactic.  I work best with maximum speed and shot range.  For ships I know that will always be piloted by Aggressive officers (I have two in my fleet), I will configure them appropriately, within limits.  There is never enough skill points to get everything, and either the armor or field repair skill is dead last.  I value armor lightly enough that I never take Evasive Action 10 for the double armor perk when it is only five points away for me (I love the +75% maneuverability perk at level 5).
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