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Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: CapnHector on June 23, 2023, 06:17:49 AM

Title: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: CapnHector on June 23, 2023, 06:17:49 AM
People were saying the Executor is a better Paragon, but that's really not true. Paragon just needs more D-mods. No Omega weapons needed this time. Tri-tachyon created these drones and will take them down!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axhd9EWkqKI


If anyone knows how to fight 6 Ordos or more, let me know, since I was unable to do it by just increasing fleet points.

Q&A
Q: I thought PD was a scam.
A: It is not good on the Executor because for that ship taking soft flux and hard flux is all the same. On the Paragon it is actually good, because soft flux doesn't exist, so if you block the missile you take zero damage, whereas if you don't you might take 2000, for example.
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Also, sorry if anyone feels like I'm posting too many videos. I felt like these are pretty good gameplay content. Anyway, rather than make a billion threads I plan to add videos about my other fun and weird but less powerful Ordo farming fleets like the all Retribution fleet, Colossus Mk. II fleet, and Venture (LP) fleets into this post, so watch this space.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Cruacious on June 23, 2023, 06:26:07 AM
Paragon is still the god of High-Tier. Yes, the Executor is a nice ship, but it isn't tanky enough to main-line a fleet for more than a few seconds. The Paragon is the Hammer and the Anvil, all in one.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Candypowers on June 23, 2023, 06:32:54 AM
Nice. try with invictus next.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Lawrence Master-blaster on June 23, 2023, 06:49:14 AM
(HD is still rendering so I didn't watch the whole thing)

I theorized that Autopulse with S-modded Expanded Magazines is new meta for the Paragon in 0.96 - with Advanced Targeting Core it still has a proper "capital" range, 50% more ammo regen makes it a full-fledged main battery and you don't lose as much when the Fortress Shield is activated because you can regenerate ammo in the meantime. Better efficiency than the Plasma Cannon and hard flux unlike the Tachyon.

Have you tried Heavy Needlers in the universals? That's another weapon that should fit well on the Paragon.

Also, have you actually filled all the slots? With PD? Hope you're okay...
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Grievous69 on June 23, 2023, 07:13:36 AM
Wolfs carried the fight smh, false advertising. Jkjk

On a serious note yipeee Missile Autoloader Paragon dream is real! Don't worry you're not posting too much, it's always nice to see other people passionate about the game.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: CapnHector on June 23, 2023, 09:05:41 AM
Thanks guys! I'll think about if I merge the video library here or make a new thread. Anyway...

Wolfs carried the fight smh, false advertising. Jkjk

On a serious note yipeee Missile Autoloader Paragon dream is real! Don't worry you're not posting too much, it's always nice to see other people passionate about the game.

Yeah I found the missile autoloader quite good here based just on unscientific feels. You'll notice that it didn't get very high numbers but looking at the fight it seems AI is firing them at just the right time so that they act as sort of finishers. However, unlike Harpoons, Breaches with autoloaders hit - and last all the way through even a 5 Ordo fight. They are in their own group so no AI tinkering.

(HD is still rendering so I didn't watch the whole thing)

I theorized that Autopulse with S-modded Expanded Magazines is new meta for the Paragon in 0.96 - with Advanced Targeting Core it still has a proper "capital" range, 50% more ammo regen makes it a full-fledged main battery and you don't lose as much when the Fortress Shield is activated because you can regenerate ammo in the meantime. Better efficiency than the Plasma Cannon and hard flux unlike the Tachyon.

Have you tried Heavy Needlers in the universals? That's another weapon that should fit well on the Paragon.

APL + S-magazines seems great. Mind you APL Paragon was already good but now these are lower hit strength Mjolnirs even after ammo runs out.

Heavy Needler was my first pick, but based on observation I swapped to HVD. That is because I wanted two threat ranges so Remnants can't escape so easily - APL range and then the other is IRAL-HVD-Breach range.

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Also, have you actually filled all the slots?

I would never do such a thing to a capital.

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With PD? Hope you're okay...

Yeah I'm generally more in the PD is a scam camp but it is actually good here.

The Paragon has functionally infinite soft flux dissipation so turning hard flux to soft is good. By contrast if you're the Executor and are always overfluxed in combat and have .37 shields, then if you spend 200 flux shooting down a missile you could just have taken 1080 HE damage on the shield instead with the same result. That's not even getting to how it often doesn't work and costs OP... But yes here the synergy with Burst PD is too good go pass.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Alex on June 23, 2023, 09:17:58 AM
Haha, awesome!

I didn't actually watch the whole video, skipped around a bitlot, so apologies if this should be already clear: are the Radiants just the last to die, or does the AI just always end up deploying them last in this kind of fight? If it's the latter, then that seems like it's probably a bug of some sort.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Megas on June 23, 2023, 09:35:44 AM
I didn't actually watch the whole video, skipped around a bitlot, so apologies if this should be already clear: are the Radiants just the last to die, or does the AI just always end up deploying them last in this kind of fight? If it's the latter, then that seems like it's probably a bug of some sort.
Are new ships deployed (almost) as soon as ships die?  That can explain why Radiants or any high DP cost ship gets deployed last.

If Ordos deploy max ships at the start, but cheap ships die at a slow rate, and the enemy deploys new ships as soon as casualties are taken, it may not have the DP to deploy high cost ships like Radiants until the end when it cannot deploy more low cost ships (because they all dead) and wait until it has enough DP to deploy expensive ships.  Until that point, it keeps sending more cheap ships because that is all it can afford with its DP budget right now.

Even if an expensive gets deployed early and then gets killed, will the AI deploy another expensive ship, or randomly choose multiple cheap ships?  Doing the latter will lock in cheap ships until they run out or the player miraculously exploding a bunch of cheap ships simultaneously.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Hiruma Kai on June 23, 2023, 09:37:19 AM
Haha, awesome!

I didn't actually watch the whole video, skipped around a bitlot, so apologies if this should be already clear: are the Radiants just the last to die, or does the AI just always end up deploying them last in this kind of fight? If it's the latter, then that seems like it's probably a bug of some sort.

My impression is Novas come out in the first wave, and Radiants genarally come out at the end of any double Ordo fight or bigger.  Which makes sense if the AI is just deploying ships as soon as ships are going down.  Unless a Radiant is in the first wave, all other ships cost less than 60 DP, and if there's spare DP, I think it'll deploy something cheaper immediately, so you never get a 60 DP slot free until the end.  I think this is also why the Apex cruiser tends to come out as a clump towards the end as well (at least in my experience).  At 30 DP, they're more expensive than anything except the capitals.

Or is the AI supposed to wait some time after a ship dies to see if any more die, and then send out a larger wave?

Edit: Apparently Megas was faster with this thought than I was.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: serp on June 23, 2023, 09:42:19 AM

Also, sorry if anyone feels like I'm posting too many videos. I felt like these are pretty good gameplay content. Anyway, rather than make a billion threads I plan to add videos about my other fun and weird but less powerful Ordo farming fleets like the all Retribution fleet, Colossus Mk. II fleet, and Venture (LP) fleets into this post, so watch this space.

No way, do as many of these tests as you think are interesting! They're fun, at least for someone that hasn't done these tests themself: I was just going to do a run based around gryphons (eventually stomping on ordos like this) but now it looks like they might not be so relatively great for these long 500% fights!
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: CapnHector on June 23, 2023, 09:47:40 AM
Haha, awesome!

I didn't actually watch the whole video, skipped around a bitlot, so apologies if this should be already clear: are the Radiants just the last to die, or does the AI just always end up deploying them last in this kind of fight? If it's the latter, then that seems like it's probably a bug of some sort.

There's a clear choreography to these fights. It starts with smaller ships. Novas are deployed at the start or end. Frigates first, then Fulgents and Scintillas. Brilliants come with the previous. Then Apexes. Finally Radiants. You can see the exact order in the videos, both proceed typically. I don't think I've ever seen a middle or an early Radiant in a 5 Ordo fight, occur with fewer Ordos though. Then and again sample size is not very large either.

There are exceptions but that is the general rule. It's something that helps too, because facing Radiants alongside the frigates would be bad. So mixing it up would make these harder.


Also, sorry if anyone feels like I'm posting too many videos. I felt like these are pretty good gameplay content. Anyway, rather than make a billion threads I plan to add videos about my other fun and weird but less powerful Ordo farming fleets like the all Retribution fleet, Colossus Mk. II fleet, and Venture (LP) fleets into this post, so watch this space.

No way, do as many of these tests as you think are interesting! They're fun, at least for someone that hasn't done these tests themself: I was just going to do a run based around gryphons (eventually stomping on ordos like this) but now it looks like they might not be so relatively great for these long 500% fights!

Thanks! You can definitely power your way through the game towards the Executor or Paragon fleet. (I copied the ships because I didn't want to grind for D-mods but I think they would tolerate most.) They should clear all lower level content in the game just fine too. Should even be an easy game plan due to free Executor from Sindrian quests.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: llama on June 23, 2023, 10:03:38 AM
I didn't actually watch the whole video, skipped around a bitlot, so apologies if this should be already clear: are the Radiants just the last to die, or does the AI just always end up deploying them last in this kind of fight? If it's the latter, then that seems like it's probably a bug of some sort.

I saw this pointed out in an unrelated youtube video a few weeks back, so it seems like a real pattern (https://youtu.be/OLx2etWGQCU?t=796)
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Lawrence Master-blaster on June 23, 2023, 10:08:18 AM
I didn't actually watch the whole video, skipped around a bitlot, so apologies if this should be already clear: are the Radiants just the last to die, or does the AI just always end up deploying them last in this kind of fight? If it's the latter, then that seems like it's probably a bug of some sort.

Outside of initial deployment, the AI seems to deploy all remaining ships from lowest DP to highest. I thought that was intentional...
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Grievous69 on June 23, 2023, 10:13:53 AM
This is the biggest plot twist on this forum, lmaoooo. It's been like that for multiple versions, frigates and destroyers first, with cruisers on the side if there's still room. Radiants were always last unless I'm being brainwashed here. This version is slightly different because Novas can appear at the beginning, but that's the only difference. And now we find out that's not intentional...

Same is even true for the 1 mil special bounty, where you need to wait a fair bit to fight the true monsters of that fleet.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: serp on June 23, 2023, 10:18:14 AM

Thanks! You can definitely power your way through the game towards the Executor or Paragon fleet. (I copied the ships because I didn't want to grind for D-mods but I think they would tolerate most.) They should clear all lower level content in the game just fine too. Should even be an easy game plan due to free Executor from Sindrian quests.

Well, yeah, anything can get through the game, but most usefully to me, these trials might be showing what the AI is good with in the highest stakes endgame fights; usually I'm too absorbed in my piloting while playing to really analyze what my silly ships are doing, and when I do take the time to look I'm usually frustrated lol.

The ships you're testing aren't limited by a harpoon-based lifespan in fights, only  by hull and ppt as they go deeper into ordos, although they seem to require a lot of tactical-map micro by comparison. DO d-mod rolls and fractal weapons kinda complicate any results, of course.

I'm kinda warming up to the idea of 12 gamma glimmers added on, but I don't think I can ask you to do a glimmer mono, they just don't cost enough lol
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: CapnHector on June 23, 2023, 10:37:05 AM
@serp I think you might enjoy the Reinforced Bulkheads + Elite Combat Endurance play style (and even Damage Control if it fits into your build). These ships for example have 25200 hull and elite CE, so if they live even at 1 hp they regenerate back to 12600 hull which might as well be a new Paragon. Pretty good for a 30 OP hullmod if you're taking CE anyway. IMO this gives the AI latitude to make mistakes and also gives you more time to go help the ship (a lot more time with elite DC but for example this ship had other priorities)

I used Glimmers in the Pegasus 3 Ordo fleet, will need to make a video of that one too at some point. They're pretty good for dueling Radiants in fact and have a special use in getting capitals out of trouble, but also die very fast as of .96, used to be tougher, I think it's AI changes. Best thought of as a special kind of missile. Well, at least my SO Ion Pulser build. Excellent frigates overall but don't help much in this kind of fight other than temporarily. Some objective grabber is absolutely necessary though, SO Glimmers do it well.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Alex on June 23, 2023, 11:43:51 AM
(Thank you all for the info about deployments! Made a note. IIRC it does wait *some* time but it's probably not near enough and it ends up being a trickle; I'll take a look.)
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: crvt on June 23, 2023, 11:59:54 AM
It does some time end up deploying Novas instead of e.g. brilliants. But I think I've only seen a Radiant being deployed early once or twice, and that was before 0.96a.

I'm not actually sure what'd be harder to face, Radiants being deployed throughout the fight and being a constant threat of killing a ship and it snow-balling out of control, or the current situation where you end up fighting something like 7 Radiants in a row when your ships just finished going through the apex grind and are running out of time.

However, I can immediately say, that if Apexes ever get deployed early, that'll make Remnant weaker as majority of fleet compositions can just avoid them forever and they become dead DP.
Right now they mostly come when Ordo runs out of Brilliants.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Vanshilar on June 23, 2023, 12:25:32 PM
If anyone knows how to fight 6 Ordos or more, let me know, since I was unable to do it by just increasing fleet points.

You should be able to fight 6 Ordos or more by increasing fleet points. However, the difficult part becomes corralling all the fleets to within the 500 su join range that AI fleets use to determine whether or not they can assist another fleet. To change this, go into settings.json and change "battleJoinRange" from 500 to whatever you'd like; I find that 2000 is usually enough.

Also, sorry if anyone feels like I'm posting too many videos. I felt like these are pretty good gameplay content. Anyway, rather than make a billion threads I plan to add videos about my other fun and weird but less powerful Ordo farming fleets like the all Retribution fleet, Colossus Mk. II fleet, and Venture (LP) fleets into this post, so watch this space.

Actually, I find that videos are perhaps the single most helpful resource in helping understand what's going on in battle. The second most important being Detailed Combat Results. Videos help me figure out not just the ship loadouts that the player is using, but also, how the player is actually commanding the fleet in combat. Anyone can come on the forums and say "Ship/loadout X is awesome! Really!" but a lot of the time when I try it out it ends up being...not that great, and I never know if it's me not knowing how to use it or the person simply giving bad advice. Videos help eliminate that ambiguity.

I didn't actually watch the whole video, skipped around a bitlot, so apologies if this should be already clear: are the Radiants just the last to die, or does the AI just always end up deploying them last in this kind of fight? If it's the latter, then that seems like it's probably a bug of some sort.

In the past, it was always 1 (sometimes 2) Radiants spawning with the initial fleet, then it's frigates/destroyers, then a bunch of Brilliants, then Radiants at the end. In 0.96a, it seems to pretty much always be 2 Novae with the fleet at the start, no Radiants (assuming there are enough Novae of course), then frigates/destroyers, then Brilliants, then Apexes, then Novae (if any are left), then Radiants. If there are a lot of simultaneous kills on the initial enemy fleet, then there might be another Nova or Radiant early on after the initial wave, but usually not.

It leads to certain strategies to take advantage of this. For example, if you don't want 4 Radiants to spawn together at the end, you can just not kill one of the other enemy ships, ensuring that you only have to deal with 3 Radiants at a time.

Intentional or not, I don't really know if it's a "bad" thing that this is the way it currently works. With the current setup, the player's fleet has to be able to handle 1) an initial mixed fleet of different size ships, then 2) a large wolfpack frigate/destroyer swarm, then 3) a bunch of big ships at the end. So the fleet *has* to be able to handle different enemy fleet compositions to finish the fight successfully, and optimizing against one fleet composition instead of looking at the whole battle usually leads to suboptimal results. I actually find the wolfpack phase generally the hardest, and the initial mixed fleet phase the easiest. It also fits with the usual RPG trope of the player party initially fighting a bunch of weak kobolds or goblins or whatever and then progressively moving up to more difficult enemies until they get to the boss monster(s) at the end.

So if it's changed to the enemy fleet always deploying reinforcements in a mixed composition, that might actually have the effect of making battles easier, rather than more challenging.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: serp on June 23, 2023, 02:21:25 PM
I wish the simulator wasn't such dog$***, these videos wouldn't be so luminary lol. I suspect that it's designed to be useless tho, almost certainly.

Are there working mods that simulate battles just as they occur in the wild?
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: BaBosa on June 23, 2023, 07:08:00 PM
I wish the simulator wasn't such dog$***, these videos wouldn't be so luminary lol. I suspect that it's designed to be useless tho, almost certainly.

Are there working mods that simulate battles just as they occur in the wild?
With command console, you can type spawnfleet and get a random real fleet to fight. Then just save before and reload.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Genir on September 17, 2023, 04:31:52 PM
I wanted to share my anti-Ordo Paragon build and some observations I made when building it.

First, I don't run a capital ship monofleet. Instead I have 3 Paragons, 6 LP Brawlers and a Centurion for sitting in the back and producing command points. 220 DP in total. Also, I mod weapon AI tags. So my findings may not 100% relevant for your case.

I build my Paragons around Tachyon Lances with USE_LESS_VS_SHIELDS,STRIKE,USE_VS_FRIGATES tags. STRIKE,USE_VS_FRIGATES is just to stop the AI lame attempts at attacking fighters with the Lances. USE_LESS_VS_SHIELDS is the important part - it causes AI to wait unitl the enemy shields are down and only then impale the poor hull with the Lance. It's so decisive! And it works very well against Remnants when you have only small window of opportunity when their shields are down and before they kite away.

Suprisingly, it turns out there's a good weapon for Medium energy slots: Phase Lance. With Advanced Optics and same AI tags as Tach Lances they act as an additional Tachyon Lance. According to Deatiled Combat Results, Phase Lances do non-insignificant amount of hull damage.

Remaining slots are for anti-shield duty: Heavy Needlers (with STRIKE,USE_VS_FRIGATES to not act as wannabe PD) and Plasma Cannons. PCs double as anti armor/hull weapons. When I tried replacing PCs with Autopulse Lasers, the overall setup felt less "decisive".

I also tried swapping Plasma Cannons with Tachyon Lances, so that PCs in turrets can better deal with frigates. But the resulting range mismatch had a very bad effect - the build changed from the best one I tested to straight up the worst.

Quote
People were saying the Executor is a better Paragon, but that's really not true. Paragon just needs more D-mods.

From what I observed, Paragon is much, much stronger than the Executor. And I'm comparing 3 Paragon fleet to 4 Executor fleet! Pargon toughness is in completely another league and it also has more firepower. I don't have to babysit Paragons all the time. If one gets surrounded, it often is able to shrug off the attacks and destroy all the enemies by itself, whereas Executor would be destroyed almost immediately. Paragon can also easily 1v1 any Radiant configuration. Executor can maybe 1v1 some of the more lame Radiant configs.

But Executors are still better for fighting Ordos. They may be brittle, but thanks to their superior speed and beter focused firepower they can dictate the engagement, whereas Paragons just sit in one place and let the enemy kite. I mostly let my ships decide where to move in battle. The result is that Executors steadily advance towards enemy spawn point and Paragons remain immobile or even move back. It can be best observed in normal 300k bounties, when there is absolutely no danger for both ships. Executors complete the bounty in about half the time required by Paragons.

Overall, the Ordo battles with Paragons are much more relaxed but drag for too long. It may not be a problem when you use retreat order during a battle, but I don't use this mechanic. Not to mention Executors are more fun!

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: CapnHector on September 18, 2023, 04:02:32 AM
Nice, thanks for sharing. The AI tweak is likely very helpful, because non-HSA Tachyon Lance (and apparently Phase Lance for that matter, but I've honestly never even really tried that weapon as it never gets past the sim stage in builds) is otherwise often wasted vs Remnants. You could consider including that in your AI mod in case somebody wants it without editing files themselves.

I've been unable to create a monofleet of Executors that would dominate a 5 Ordo fight to that extent, unfortunately. The mobility of the Executor certainly helps, but I would not let them move towards the enemy spawn point other than in the late (Apex-Radiant) stages of the fight, after all fast ships are gone, because they are very vulnerable to being swarmed.

I still have a theory that Paragon (specifically 5x Paragon with D-mods) would be the one to do 7 Ordos, specifically because with the same level of gameplay I invested in the Gigacannon Executors (so, much better than in this video) they would likely be the most durable ship in the game while also being extremely deadly, and because the 5 Ordo in particular is so easy with them. I now regard the build I posted in the OP as highly suboptimal, and there's much room to cut things, and the gameplay was bad, yet it's still clear that at the end they had another Ordo in them, if barely. Radiants kiting Paragons shouldn't be a problem, since Paragons outrange most/all Radiants depending on build. However I got obsessed with the art project, so haven't played much recently. Beating SCC's 35 DP vs 824 DP is still on the table too, unfortunately my idea (Solo Nova + distraction Monitor) didn't work or at least it didn't work in such as 10 tries, largely because the ship eventually gets surrounded without a frigate to cover its rear.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Siffrin on September 18, 2023, 05:33:07 AM
Just a minor suggestion to the Paragons PD but if you don't mind downgrading the Heavy Burst PDs to Burst PDs the slots I've marked have even better angles like 270 degrees.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: CapnHector on September 18, 2023, 05:53:25 AM
Yeah. It should also lose the silly PD, gain Hardened Shields, not be a hull tank, gain 30 caps for starters. I was playing pretty badly back when this was new.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Genir on September 18, 2023, 03:59:22 PM
Nice, thanks for sharing. The AI tweak is likely very helpful, because non-HSA Tachyon Lance (and apparently Phase Lance for that matter, but I've honestly never even really tried that weapon as it never gets past the sim stage in builds) is otherwise often wasted vs Remnants. You could consider including that in your AI mod in case somebody wants it without editing files themselves.

I believe USE_LESS_VS_SHIELDS should be the default setting for both Lances and for HIL. It makes the weapons (especially Lances) so much more effective. But I don't think I will include it in the mod. Whenever I touch the topic of preventing Lances or HILs firing on shields on Discord, I get answers like "but you should want Lances firing on shields, they overload enemies and EMP damage pierces shields". I prefer my enemies dead instead of overloaded or EMPed, but oh well.

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I've been unable to create a monofleet of Executors that would dominate a 5 Ordo fight to that extent, unfortunately. The mobility of the Executor certainly helps, but I would not let them move towards the enemy spawn point other than in the late (Apex-Radiant) stages of the fight, after all fast ships are gone, because they are very vulnerable to being swarmed.

Using frigates probably helps with the swarming, at least by enemy frigates. As for bigger ships, I don't find Executors that vulnerable. The trick is for them to stay together, so they can focus fire and pop whoever dares to approach. Also, it's important to leave the objectives for Remnants to capture after you deloyed your entire fleet. Objectives under your control really trigger the AI to do effective, even if unintended, flanking maneuvers.

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Radiants kiting Paragons shouldn't be a problem, since Paragons outrange most/all Radiants depending on build.

I didn't make myself clear. By kiting I meant Radiants retreating when high on flux, venting and returning, all while taking barely any hull damage. I saw this happening a lot in your video as well. Such prolonged fights, even if not very dangerous for the Paragon, inevitably lead to depleted CR. The extent to which this is happening may be recognized by ratio of hull damage to shield damage in Detailed Combat Results. The less shields in relation to hull, the better, meaning your shots were more "efficient".

Executors are good at efficient damage, as demonstrated by the attached battle report. I never could get Paragons to the same level of efficiency, even with their one-shot one-kill Tach Lances. OTOH the armor damage in your video is very low compared to hull damage. I wonder why?

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: CapnHector on September 18, 2023, 08:34:26 PM
There is a very simple and prosaic reason, which is that DCR is inaccurate (at base speed) when it comes to beam weapons:  https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11551.msg399848#msg399848 There hasn't been a fixed release, so this is still in effect. At base speed you would call it exaggerating. However the effect is combatspeedmult dependent and at something like 3x speed you will see numbers inflated many times over. In my ships' case I use a 2x multiplier and I only have beam weapons dealing good damage to hull (IR Autolance). In your case it would inflate armor damage.

This is usually easier to see on your ships because Remnant use beams and there are fewer variables. For example, you reported above that a Paragon took 1401 hull damage and ended the combat at 95% hull. However, that implies a starting hull HP of 28020, while your Paragons have a max hull hp of 18000. Since the hull HP number is reliable (available from Starsector base), the correct amount of hull damage taken was 900. Alternatively taking 1401 hull damage should have placed it at 92% hull. Not the most dramatic example but the only one available from those reports, could look at some ships that took more damage, you might see them taking way more than they have hull HP.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Genir on September 19, 2023, 05:47:50 AM
Thanks for shattering my illusions ;D

I guess I have another coding project (contributing to DCR) after I finish my mod.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Cryovolcanic on October 21, 2023, 09:19:48 PM
I build my Paragons around Tachyon Lances with USE_LESS_VS_SHIELDS,STRIKE,USE_VS_FRIGATES tags. STRIKE,USE_VS_FRIGATES is just to stop the AI lame attempts at attacking fighters with the Lances. USE_LESS_VS_SHIELDS is the important part - it causes AI to wait unitl the enemy shields are down and only then impale the poor hull with the Lance. It's so decisive! And it works very well against Remnants when you have only small window of opportunity when their shields are down and before they kite away.

Where can you find these usage rules for each weapon? Rather than changing them, I would like to see what the AI tries to do with default weapons.
Title: Re: Taking out 5 Ordos with 5 Paragons
Post by: Genir on October 22, 2023, 10:56:12 AM
Where can you find these usage rules for each weapon? Rather than changing them, I would like to see what the AI tries to do with default weapons.

You can find the rule assignment in starsector/starsector-core/data/weapons/weapon_data.csv