It has a Storm Needler for the specific reason that I was unable to make one that could defeat a Radiant 1v1 using any other weapon (I tried a lot of combos - I think Mark IX-Hephaestus also won once but mostly not).
You are paying 62.5% of the cost of a Conquest for this ship, and a Conquest can be kitted to defeat two sim Radiants simultaneously without even taking much damage if you optimize the ship properly, so this ship is simply poor value if it can't defeat even one.
Does your layout work vs Ordos under AI control? If you have a better one, share please, I would love to use this ship. I do realize now that I didn't try 2x Squall with elite missile spec, since I usually do not run the elite version for multi-Ordo fights which are the goal, so that must still be tried and might work with other weapons.
Also if you guys want to test your ships vs the Radiant, here is how to add it to the sim: in data/campaign/sim_opponents add the lines
radiant_Assault
radiant_Strike
. Alternatively you can overwrite that file with this one I attached. It is a hard fight.
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Well, I took a fleet of these out vs one Ordo completely under AI control, using just Atlas MkII and frigates, and with just one order, Defend on one of the Atlas MkIIs, and it was a success. This is probably not at all optimal since you likely really should have a player controlled tank to protect your Atlas MkII and/or babysit them and use them as artillery pieces rather than main ships of the line like you said. But it even works well enough like this. I now think this actually a viable endgame ship once you learn how to build it.
I am not good enough to make a video, so here is a photo essay with some glorious Atlas MkII action.
Atlas Mk. II vs. Remnant Ordo
(https://i.ibb.co/qD2QqNg/atlasmkii-6.png) (https://ibb.co/j8jX0yw)
(https://i.ibb.co/9g1mRDj/atlasmkii-7.png) (https://ibb.co/JtGWX1P)
(https://i.ibb.co/b3HhQsg/atlasmkii-8.png) (https://imgbb.com/)
(https://i.ibb.co/fNJXhqC/atlasmkii-9.png) (https://imgbb.com/)
(https://i.ibb.co/284z0rq/atlasmkii-10.png) (https://ibb.co/YDs54S2)
(https://i.ibb.co/FV1rzpK/atlasmkii-11.png) (https://ibb.co/TLGftyk)
(https://i.ibb.co/3SD8nh3/atlasmkii-12.png) (https://ibb.co/r5CLVyj)
(https://i.ibb.co/VtN47HQ/atlasmkii-13.png) (https://ibb.co/47fr6sY)
(https://i.ibb.co/vDmBgGL/atlasmkii-14.png) (https://ibb.co/9G2vzLy)
(https://i.ibb.co/pj05SNt/atlasmkii-15.png) (https://ibb.co/1GvjkBD)
(https://i.ibb.co/rbt0vfg/atlasmkii-16.png) (https://imgbb.com/)
Doing a run with each of them, and looking at the ammo used, the Detailed Combat Results data for Gauss was:
(SS9967)
weapon total shield armor hull hits fired hitrate relSquall
squall 239791 190985 13908 34899 1223 2930 0.4174 1
gauss 150971 93736 19183 38051 302 637 0.4741 0.669
railgun 46714 35256 4020 7438 887 1623 0.5465 0.511
And the Detailed Combat Results data for Mjolnir was:
(SS10012)
weapon total shield armor hull hits fired hitrate relSquall
squall 238541 193588 12060 32894 1188 2880 0.4125 1
mjolnir 209589 81234 38152 90204 759 1416 0.5360 0.567
railgun 26526 16271 1724 8529 531 1031 0.5150 0.330
The Gauss fired 67% of the time relative to the Squall, while the Mjolnir fired 57% of the time. So yes the Gauss fired more often. But the Mjolnir's hit rate (shots hit / shots fired) was higher, so in the end, they were both putting shots on target at about the same rate (0.669*0.474 = 31.7% of the rate of Squalls fired for the Gauss, and 0.567*0.536 = 30.4% of the rate of Squalls fired for the Mjolnir). The Mjolnir has a higher hit rate because the Gauss has a one-second delay before it's fired ("chargeup" in weapon_data.csv), during which its turret is tracking at a rate of 3 degrees per second, while the Mjolnir has no delay and tracks at a rate of 25 degrees per second while firing anyway (and thus at 125 degrees per second before firing). So the Gauss is more likely to miss smaller, faster targets. A lot of the focus for Ordos fleets is on the Radiant, but it only makes up around 1/4 of the total hull (and around 1/4 of the effective shield hit points, i.e. flux capacity divided by shield efficiency). So while both had probably nearly 100% hit rate against Radiants, their hit rates differed a lot against other targets.
The difference here is that with the Squalls already doing the bulk of the anti-shield damage from afar, the Mjolnirs tended to finish off targets quickly, while the Gauss didn't. That can be seen in how often the Railguns fired; they fired around 51% of the time relative to Squalls when using Gauss, while they fired only 33% of the time relative to Squalls when using Mjolnirs, indicating that fewer enemy ships closed to Railgun range (which in this case, with ITU, BM, and GI, means 700 * 1.85 = 1295 range) when using the Mjolnirs. That can also be seen in that my fleet as a whole took less damage when using Mjolnirs than when using Gauss (and over 1/3 of that was from my flagship charging in, heh); enemy ships simply got into range to fire their weapons a smaller percentage of the time, so the Mjolnirs were better at eliminating targets at range before they could close in.
Now the obvious question might then be, if Mjolnirs were doing more armor and hull damage, then where did that damage go when Gauss was used? The answer is that the flagship Onslaught (me) and the 2 Gryphons ended up doing more of the armor and hull damage with Gauss. So the share of the damage was redistributed among the other ships when the Atlas2 effectively over-specialized at anti-shield by using Gauss. That's less efficient than having it being able to do all types of damage by itself (since I'm not everywhere, nor the Gryphons), leading to a slower rate of kills.
You could mod in Ballistic Rangefinder.
Yeah the issue is how much OP that takes up. Fortunately, looking through the combat results, it turns out that the Atlas2's don't really use up all their missile ammo against double Ordos. It cuts it a bit close, but (like the Eradicator) they use up roughly 90% of their Squalls if they have Missile Spec (elite) but no Expanded Missile Racks versus double Ordos. So they'd need EMR against triple Ordos but double Ordos are fine.
So taking out EMR and putting in BRF instead, it ended up working out pretty well. I tried running my flagship Onslaught XIV test against double Ordos, with 6 Atlas2's using dual Squalls, dual Mjolnirs, and dual Railguns with BRF, ECCM, ITU, Militarized Subsystems, and Auxiliary Thrusters, max vents, then remainder into caps, with officer skills as CE, TA, BM, MS (elite), and GI. That's 184 DP, so I set battle size to 370 DP, and I get to deploy my entire fleet at start due to BotB. Note that this means I'm using 184 DP's worth of ships against 222 DP's worth of enemy ships. However, the fleet was able to handle it just fine, usually coming in at around 300 seconds to kill the double Ordos fleet (see attached for an example). The Detailed Combat Results data for that run was:
weapon total shield armor hull hits
squall 289340 221127 16216 51997 1488
mjolnir 249762 82252 52915 114592 899
railgun 104450 78665 5745 20038 1697
The Railguns clearly contributed a lot, so even though BRF is expensive, it does help a lot. Interestingly, Railguns fired around 80% of the time of Squalls, while Mjolnirs fired a bit more than 50% of the time even at low flux, so the AI tended to turn Mjolnir off unnecessarily (i.e. at low flux) for whatever reason while Railguns were kept on. This behavior is easy to see in sim, and happens with the other Large Ballistics as well, not just Mjolnir. I'll have to try playing around with different weapon group arrangements (such as all in the same group, or 1 Mjolnir 1 Railgun per group) to see if I can get the AI to fire the Large Ballistics more often. It's silly that the player needs to resort to such non-intuitive shenanigans to make the AI work right, but that's the current state of the game.
Testing this further, Atlas2 with Gauss/Mjolnir, Gauss/Heph, or Mjolnir/Heph also performed pretty similarly. Gauss for longer range, Heph for more anti-armor at the expense of less anti-shield and less anti-hull. Heph/Heph was pretty bad though, so that takes out too much anti-shield against Ordos.
The Atlas2 with any of these Large Ballistics combinations (except the Heph/Heph) could finish the fight in around 300 seconds, coming in at over 400 DPS, while fighting against odds (50% of battle size instead of 60% of battle size), with no losses. By comparison, my Onslaught with even a full fleet of 10 Eradicators (284 seconds) or a full fleet of 11 Apogees (287 seconds) were only marginally faster, and all non-Gryphon cruisers I tested were generally at around 300 DPS or less. So the Atlas2 can clearly be made to work effectively.
I think for an operational fleet though, it'd be better to add in some frigates or Shrikes or something to take care of enemy strays that get out of the line, so that the Atlas2's don't have to chase them down, increasing the Atlas2's effectiveness. This fleet was only 184 DP, so there's another 16 DP to play with to reach 200 DP (and thus 50% of battle size at 400 battle size, and thus can deploy the entire fleet at the start with BotB).
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