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Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Randaru on September 02, 2021, 10:21:12 AM

Title: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Randaru on September 02, 2021, 10:21:12 AM
Intro:

After joining the community and snooping around in Discord channel, I've decided to create a little fun discussion topic on the forum by providing my insight regarding Starsector's balance as a first-time player and an over-analyzer. Forum's community seems to be filled with seasoned Starsector veterans to the brim, so I want to share my newbie's opinion, and compare it to those who probably know better than I do, in this thread. All and all, hopefully, I will be able to spark a discussion and maybe even get some criticism that I (and other readers, too) can use to improve decision making when further exploring possibilities of this game.
For reference, I've only done one playthrough of about 80-100 hours, with some branching savefiles where I tinkered with the files themselves to try out new stuff I wouldn't otherwise get on my main save legitimately. Hopefully, the more biases I have, the more people will come to say how wrong I am and how I should probably uninstall, which I will be more than happy to hear.
Also an obligatory disclaimer that I am not a native English speaker, not have I ever studied it, so I bear no responsibility for any brain damage my gibberish may cause you.


Now that's out of the way, allow me to explain how I wanna do this. This thread is about the core of Starsector gameplay, which is, obviously, ships! So, I've constructed it in a (hopefully) comprehensive ranking order, where I try to rank all the ships within their respective class in a usual manner familiar to pretty much every gamer under the sun - a tier list. Starting with the best S-tier, with exceptional ships, going down to A with solid picks and down the alphabet, ending up with D-tier, filled with outclassed ship hull options.
So, before we start, let's define what makes a ship good. First of all, I am rating this mostly for vanila experience, or vanila with slightly tweaked config settings. So, the main point is value to the player's basic fleet composition: how cheap is it to deploy and how good is it for what it's worth. Second of all, I exclude all the fun factors out of the equasion. There is no "unusable trash tier" in my list, as you can make all but a few of the ships function to an extent, and the player should absolutely play what they find enjoyable first and foremost. Elaborating further on the criteria, we can divide it into distinct sections in which each ship can be evaluated at.

Combat stats: How good the craft is on its own. This includes its weapons and systems, amount of hullmods it can fit, flux and shield stats, speed, and so on. Basically, how good is it against other ships, and how good is it at supporting the rest of your fleet and synergizing with other members of your team, meaning, other ships in your fleet composition. How friendly AI is gonna use the ship also plays a significant role in its placement. This section is obviously the most valuable; to hit an elusive S-rank, the ship must be either good at most, or even all matchups, or be exceptional at what it does when supporting other ships of your fleet, or playing otherwise important role in your victory. Being able to win easy fights good doesn't earn a ship much credit, but punching way above its weight (and numbers) certainly does.

Deployment stats: How cheap is it to deploy, and, to a much lesser extent, how cheap is it to maintain on the global map. Aiming for maximum vanila battle size or slightly higher, this basically means - how many more ships can you deploy after the vessel in question, especially when outnumbered, which is the main purpose of this section, and why it is a close second on this list of values. Basically, costing cheap and punching way above its DP cost earns ship a lot of points in its rating. Being cheap and expendable trash, however, does not, since the player is also somewhat limited by fleet size, so overwhelming the opponent with garbage is a pretty poor strategy in the long run.

Additional combat utility: This is mostly miscellaneous stuff, or very specific scenarios. How well can your big ships fight enemy stations? How well does your ship run down retreating enemies? Does your freighter double as a combat unit(more on that later)? Basically, this is ship's global versatility of what it can do in various combat scenarios. It earns some points if the ship excels at it, but it can also lose ships some ranking if they can't perform various tasks that one would expect them to perform.

Accessibility: Let me clarify two things. Firstly, monetary price has little value in this list (since even if a noob like me is swimming in money, so will more competent and experienced players), unless it's so accessible you can get it pretty much right after starting the game. Secondly, how you find the ship in the world only has any bearing on its rating if it's something exceptionally rare or heavily RNG-dependent. Also, being at earlier stages of the game doesn't change rating much as hull sizes go up, since if you want to go for what's "good" as soon as possible, you can just pick what's best from "Frigates" dollar menu. Also, one of the main points of this section is skills, you and your officers included. If it needs specific skills to function that lock you out of more powerful options later down the line, or if it requires specific officer skills to be good, without providing equally valuable return in other sections - this is a very good way to get knocked down a tier.

Design variation: If there are two designs of the same hull that are more or less equally common, and one outperforms the other in all aspects - the inferior design automatically earns a D-tier, for the virtue of being totally outmatched. Although I do think that you should use XIV designs over stock ones wherever possible, they are exempt from this rule due to them being somewhat RNG-dependent to get, and not having that massive of an advantage over stock for the latter to be overlooked when the former is absent.


Oh, and another thing. I will rate all the dedicated freighters, right now, with a simple rule of thumb: the bigger - the better. Simply slap "Militarized Subsystems", "Augmented Drive Field" and "Efficiency Overhaul" on each of your chonky boys, preferably by building the most expensive ones in, to both have more efficient supply and fuel usage for when you actually start getting your fleet rolling, and to free up some space for valuable combat ships.

Now that's all the rating criteria has been defined, let's jump right in. Starting with capital ships and down the size, I'll rank them all relative to each other, giving my thoughts on each ship's placement on the list - because, again, the whole point of me doing this is having my opinions challenged. So, without further ado...

CAPITALS
Spoiler
S-tier

Radiant: To nobody's surprise, the remnant battleship outclasses everything else in this game combat-wise. Even despite requiring some massive investments in skills just to field a single one of these in your fleet, this is the single best ship you can possibly have. Paragon-level stats and shields, better-than-Paragon weapon slots and layout, with more loadout versatility - and all for only two thirds of Paragon's deployment price. After reading the blogposts on the forum, I began counting days until we're allowed to pilot these bad boys ourselves - let's just hope we aren't getting a severely neutered version in the process. This very ship is the sole reason why every other automated ship is missing from the list entirely: I would have ended up repeating myself over and over on every single entry with "save your automated ship DP for the Radiant".

Astral: This is easily the best thing you can have in your backline. Armed with all anti-shield and anti-armor tools you'll ever need, both fighter-based and missile-based, this ship never has to engage in close combat to pull its own weight in your fleet composition, unlike most other carriers. It's especially good at station-busting, when you have other ships to facetank it for your fighters to be able to get close. Astral is what I think to be the perfect design for a carrier: heavily specialized, but earns its worth back tenfold when you can play around negating its weaknesses with your strategic decision-making skills.

A-tier

Paragon: A staple of a good battleship statline all across the board, with the best range in the game - I'd say, 60DP cost is more than justified. It performs as one-and-half a battleship against 40DP counterparts, as you would expect, but, unlike other battleships, it decimates every smaller class on the battlefield without a chance due to its superior range and precision. I think this is an overall well-designed and well-banalnced "endgame" ship you would give to your officers, that works well both on its own, and in battle line formation.

Atlas Mk.II: You probably didn't expect me to put it here - hell, I certainly didn't. But, hear me out. Despite only working in already well-established battle line due to its poor flux dissipation to sustain its shields and weapon systems to survive on its own, it only costs 24DP to deploy, while providing ranged firepower of almost 40DP capital ship levels due to how its system functions. It also doubles as a missile-heavy warship, which means it can also support a messy frontline formation without needing much of a line of sight or being in a way of their retreat. I've heard people call it "Poor man's Conquest", and, judging by how much it costs to deploy, and how early into playthrough you can get one of these, I couldn't agree more.

Onslaught, Onslaught XIV: This is what overwhelming firepower looks like. This is easily the best rushdown capital-sized spacecraft money can buy. This is also the ship you can just slam your face into keyboard and win almost any 1v1 engagement with. Onslaught combines both shield-breaking and hull-breaking weapons in its arsenal, has decent missile coverage, and comes with a ton of OP (ordinance points) to install every flavor hullmod of your choosing and then some - and that's after you filled every possible weapon hardpoint. Despite its shield being nothing special, its hull and armor are extremely tanky, and being unable to disengage from the fight or track important targets behind its back can be easily countered by good fleet engagement strategies.

B-tier

Conquest: This is a very mobile and very heavily missile-oriented battleship, that's best used in a drive-by approach to make the most use of its speed and broadside layout, while negating its main downside of having easily the worst shield of all "expensive" capital ships. And this is where, I think, Conquest falls flat, earning itself only a B-tier of being mostly decent, but somewhat situational: it's very confusing to the friendly AI that values good statline over what ship was designed for; they either decide that Leeroy-Jenkins-charging an Onslaught face to face with pretty much no chance of winning is a good idea, or that their ship is too weak to do anything and that they'd rather chill in the backline, having 40DP you've spent on deployment go to waste. Also, broadside layout, combined with rather sparse OP pool, makes it somewhat tricky to customize. All and all, this ship can be pretty powerful in prolonged fights when piloted by the player with a good skill build, but when it comes to 40DP capital ships, Conquest's performance is painfully mediocre, especially in the hands of an AI.

Odyssey: -"Is this a broadside gunline ship, a missile ship, or a carrier?" -"Yes." While being a solid craft for taking care of your formation's flanks, Odyssey is versatile to its own detriment. It does have shields and flux stats slightly above average for the class, but mishmash of different weaponry (that all require their own separate skills to be efficient, mind you) slapped on top of a Frankensteinian hull design with a single broadside usable for main weapons is confusing enough for the player, let alone for AI. And it costing 45DP instead of usual 40 is just a cherry of dissonance on top of this confusion cake of a ship.

C-tier

Ziggurat: It's strong, but it's not "75DP, 50%CR" strong. It's good, but it's not "Radiant" good. Its main power is station busting, and it can't even do that proper, since it cannot be used in stealth raids due to being easily recognizable by every faction even when your transponder is offline. And, unlike most phase ships, it requires both phasing skills to even function on a basic level. With all its unique quirks, great close combat bursts and disturbingly good synergy with Omega weapons, if this ship had costed 50DP and 25%CR to deploy, it would have easily been an A-tier candidate. But as it is, Ziggurat's only hope of beating a Radiant (that costs half as many DP, by the way) is that the Radiant isn't armed with any kind of EMP beam, and still that's only because the AI doesn't know how to play around your motes system. Personally, I only whip this bad boy out when it's time to dumpster another pirate station or Luddic cell, or when I specifically intend to hunt down a singular Remnant ordo, since any scenario that involves prolonged use and consecutive deployments is way out of this ship's abilities (but, unfortunately, well within its pay grade). To me, Ziggurat feels more like a collection item, rather than the ultimate flagship a player can get.

Legion, Legion XIV: This ship can survive some punishment, but its fighters certainly won't. And that's the main flaw of this ship's design, earning its place as a resident of C-tier on my list. This is a 40DP capital carrier ship, but, unlike its counterpart hanging up there in S-tier, Legion trades specializing in fighters to being a jack of all trades, having decent amount of fighter bays and also decent main armaments. This raises a simple question: "how exactly are you supposed to use this ship to justify fielding it?"; neither amount of flight decks, nor your ship system can justify using it as a dedicated carrier worth 40DP, but when you throw it in combat, where Legion is fairly mediocre at best, all of your fighters now just get murdered as soon as they get replaced simply by virtue of being close to where everything explodes. This (and somewhat tricky OP pool) make bombers, which dominate among dedicated carriers, a poor choice, which, in turn, makes deploying a Legion over something else in its class, a questionable decision.

D-tier

Prometheus Mk.II: What do you get if you design a ship that becomes useless because there is at least one EMP beam in enemy fleet? That's right, you get this abomination. And I say this as a player who put another "makeshift" design, Atlas Mk.II, way up in A-tier. Prometheus has shields and flux stats on par with Atlas in how underwhelming they are, and weapon layout even worse than that of Atlas. So, it's intended to charge into the enemy battle line with shields up while firing rockets (like, you know, every Luddic Path ship does), where it will quickly lose its shields, then get disabled by an EMP and focused down by other ships due to being fairly squishy. Then why the hell does it cost exponentially more than Atlas to deploy, close to the same bracket where you have ships like Onslaught that will easily wipe the floor with Prometheus before losing a fraction of their shields? That remains mystery to me, while Prometheus Mk.II remains a mysterious stain at the very bottom rank of all capital ships.
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CRUISERS
Spoiler
S-tier

Doom: Again, to nobody's surprise, it's the one, the only, Killer Queen morphed into a ship, at the very top of the S-tier, and my personal favorite. This ship is the staple of how much value a player should get out of going in a non-conventional route in building their skills. It's also the staple of how to make a ship that can have so many different weapon loadouts and still be on top of its game with every single one. Despite a good chunk of its strategic value coming out of AI's interactions with its main ship system, Doom nonetheless turns you into a mastermind with extensive control over the battlefield and general flow of combat, limited only by how well you know your opponents' reaction to both your ship's and your mines' placement. On the side note, I think that this ship's main balancing factor is how non-spammable it is, and how poorly it performs in the hands of an AI unless it's already on the winning side, and reading the latest blogpost has hurt my soul, knowing that such unique playstyle is about to be all gone and forgotten.

Apogee: My second personal favorite ship, two of which, even deep into the lategame and several battle size config tweaks later, I simply refuse to replace in my fleet or remove my best officers from them. Its firepower is on the higher end of the class, but nothing special. However, Apogee's shields are easily the best in its entire class, and its flux is also outstanding. And, best of all, it is one of the cheapest cruisers to deploy, despite already aiming to be one of the most expensive ones. Its quality of life parameters are also noteworthy, with good self-sustaining cargo/fuel/crew compartments, on top of having built-in survey hullmods just for a convenience of packing less supplies for survey expeditions. The only downsides of Apogee that I can think of are its mediocre OP pool which makes it tricky to sustain its main plasma cannon (because what else are you going to mount on this beast), and the AI officer sometimes (rightfully so) decides that they're invincible, and proceeds to charge into a Radiant, surviving for surprisingly long, but blocking your entire fleet from focusing a high value target nonetheless.

Champion: Amazing statline and weapon hardpoints all across the board, with decent speed and maneuverability, plus an above average shield. Has some decent OP to work with, despite weaponry not requiring that much of an investment either, topped off with an adequate DP cost. Champion is, in my opinion, a perfect jack of all trades in Starsector: instead of having all the mechanics in the game mashed together in a chaotic concoction (looking at you, Odyssey), Champion has a well thought out dual energy/missile hardpoint combo with some support weaponry options on top, which ends up universally applicable against all matchups in a single player/officer build.

A-tier

Gryphon: An average cost missile ship with some limited ballistic weaponry that can be used either as long-range fleet support, or heavy-hitting rushdown that can quickly eliminate key targets when piloted by the player. It doesn't do well in prolonged fights, neither it survives for long under heavy enemy fire, but there's something about obliterating a capital ship with heavy explosives within seconds for half its deployment cost that speaks to me on a spiritual level with Gryphon.

Eagle, Eagle XIV: A staple of any rushdown fleet composition, Eagle is used best at singling out and subsequently eliminating enemy ships one by one. Obviously designed with the intention of being equally damaging against freshly shielded ships at zero flux, and exposed overloaded opponents alike, Eagle is a go-to when I want to win quickly even against overwhelming odds. Also, my script wants me to "say something about Safety Overrides", so here you go.

Dominator, Dominator XIV: The opposite of Eagle, and Onslaught's little brother, Dominator is your main gunline cruiser. Heavy armor, heavy guns, heavy hull that will take a while to get where you need it be. It shreds enemy shields and hulls on a variety of engagement ranges, but the ship itself is also poorly defended from harassment or focused fire, with some of the weakest shields in its class, as well as non-existent maneuverability, turn rate and flux dissipation; it is not, however, as helpless at one on one close range engagement as Atlas Mk.II; all and all, when you have its six, Dominator a good addition to your battle line formations.

Heron: A dedicated carrier, with dedicated carrier ship system, and not-at-all dedicated carrier engines that allow you to run away and stay alive against heavier enemy ships. Cheap to deploy and maintain, too. I haven't used this ship much, but I assume your OP pool would prove somewhat tricky to work with if you want to add some firepower to the equation.

B-tier

Mora: Right below the other carrier in this class, both in script and on the tier list, we have Mora, the punching bag of all carriers. Just like its big brother Legion, compared to Heron it trades fighter power and survivability to personal power and survivability. Unlike its big brother Legion, however, for the price of 40DP you can deploy two of these, and get two fighter bays more and higher replacement rate for the same price, so they are actually usable as proper carriers, and not just punching bags for your enemy, hence higher tier placement.

Falcon, Falcon P, Falcon XIV: A lighter Eagle that trades bulkiness and firepower for speed, allowing it to chase down and destroy smaller enemy vessels. Despite not being the primary role of cruisers, should you choose overwhelming smaller crafts like destroyers, or run routing enemy freighters down, with equally fast, but much heavier weight class ships, Falcon is the go-to hull design for you.

Fury: It's practically Falcon, but trades firepower superiority for better shields, while also being faster than Apogee to pull off escort orders. I've got quite some mileage out of one of these in my earlygame and replaced it soon after, but I can see why combining speed with survivability can bring situational value for those moments when you need your frontline reinforced, and you need it NOW. Ship's average, but deployment's cheap, so I have nothing to complain about.

C-tier

Aurora: Only volturnian lobster gods know what stopped me from putting this piece of work into D class. Maybe it's because weapons are at least somewhat decent, albeit they mostly face in completely random directions. Or because you can actually use it as a rushdown ship to quickly dispose of one key target per game, even if it's a capital ship, while getting very little help from your own fleet. All that and nothing more, for the cost of almost two Apogees. For the same price, two Furies will decimate this ship without so much of an effort, considering each one of them have almost the same shields as Aurora does.

D-tier

Venture: This ship was designed to be a piece of crap, and, hey, it succeeds! As a civilian-converted-military vessel, it performs exactly as you would expect it to perform. I've only tried it in a couple of simulations, and haven't seen it actually win against dedicated combat ships of the same deployment cost.

Colossus Mk.II, Colossus Mk.III: If you thought I put too much value on ships being too cheap to deploy, well, here is your proof of the opposite. Yes, I know they are technically different ships; no, I do not care. One is a torpedo ship, the other is a carrier, both are equally worthless meatshields that can barely fend themselves against frigates. If you don't intend to use Fighter Uplink skill, Mk.III variant can be used as a more cargo-oriented substitute for Valkyrie in your fleet with some contraband hiding capabilities, but in a combat scenario, I would never deploy any of these even if I had them in my fleet for whatever reason.
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DESTROYERS
Spoiler
S-tier

Harbinger: Whereas Doom is a ship that has great strategic value in the hands of a competent player, Harbinger is a ship that is completely busted by design, no matter which hands we are talking about. All but the most powerful capital ships with specifically beam weapons have absolutely no counterplay options against this ship's main system. One could argue that this thing can 1v1 literally every other ship in the game, with only a select few specific loadouts that even stand a chance against it. It's not a good gunline ship, nor is it conveniently spammable by the player (albeit very dangerous when spammed by enemy AI), but when 20DP can obliterate practically any "boss" ship of this game without so much of an effort, you know something is wrong with the core design of whatever it is you deploy with them.

Sunder: I actually hated this ship for its performance, until I realized that I expected it to perform on 20DP cruiser levels, and every single time Sunder just barely missed the bar I've set. And this is basically what Sunder is, a cruiser with slightly worse stats, but only for a fraction of a cost. It can't boast insane survivability due to somewhat underwhelming shields even by destroyer standards, but where Sunder doesn't lack, is its weapons. Specifically, its main weapon, since getting a large hardpoint on a destroyer is rather unique; also, on top of having two extra medium hardpoints, Sunder also boasts a motherlode of OP, so deploying the heaviest weapon you can has barely any bearing on hullmods you install on top of it all, as long as your flux can sustain all of that firepower.

Medusa: Rush enemies down, run enemies down, for when you need to combine mobility and sheer burst firepower at close range, Medusa is the best for the job. I didn't expect a skimmer to have such powerful shields, nor did I anticipate it having extra shield-breaking power due to having ballistic slots, yet, here it is. Unless you use a wolfpack fleet build, having a couple of Medusas over half a dozen of frigates in your roster is usually a superior choice for when your "big boy" ship count is already about to reach its limit.

A-tier

Enforcer, Enforcer P, Enforcer XIV: Good medium range burst firepower for only 9DP, however, this ship is pretty bad at surviving, especially in battle lines against bigger crafts. They're very good for progression, you can get these practically everywhere, and they don't cost that much to maintain and deploy for when you need to fill your fleet with something relatively decent.

Hammerhead: When you think "Destroyer", you probably think "Hammerhead". Accessible, cheap, easy to use, easy to outfit, easy to give to an AI pilot, fairly well defended and suited to engage targets at all but longest ranges, and also very self-sufficient when left to its own devices.

Drover: A primary bomber carrier or heavy remnant drone launcher for when you need to hit that Fighter Uplink flight deck softcap without using an Odyssey. Can actually fend for itself against frigates without recalling its fighters, if you give it railguns and Integrated Targeting Unit hull module.

B-tier

Condor: This combination of carrier and support rocket ship is the easiest to acquire and deploy, and the only thing keeping it from being A-tier is the abysmal amount of OP it lets you work with. Still, it allows you to start annoying your enemies with constant bomber+Pilum spam pretty much as soon as you begin your playthrough, so no complaints there.

Mule P: This is another ship I bet nobody expected this high. It's basically a cargo ship that lets you hide contraband for when you still rely on trading, but it's also dirt cheap to deploy, as well as beefy enough to be thrown in as a meatshield in a pinch. It also has enough OP to get it some shield-busting weaponry and missiles, as well as Integrated Targeting Unit, and even some half-decent vents to top it off. I have personally used it up until I literally had no more need to trade, and threw it into combat against everything, even remnant ordos, countless times. If you have no problem with stop-searches, however, I don't recommend having this in your fleet.

C-tier

Shrike: -"What if... *hits blunt* ...frigate, but bigger, slower, more expensive, and can't be used in wolfpack builds?... This is what Shrike, unfortunately, is. Statline and weapons of a mediocre frigate, speed, hull size and deployment cost of a destroyer. Unless you pilot it yourself to get some strategic usage out of that medium missile you get, I don't see why would you decisively include this in your fleet if performance is your only concern.

D-tier

Gemini: Another civilian-turned-military hull with questionable combat capabilities, but this time for destroyer class, and turned into a carrier. Costs a lot to deploy even for an intentionally worthless ship - even more expensive than Colossus Mk.III, which also happens to be more valuable when deployed than this vessel. Has half-decent shields, but not enough flux to support them.

Buffalo Mk.II: Can barely fight against shuttle frigates. Has survivability of a paper plane. Costs accordingly. Doesn't even double as a freighter.

Mule, Shrike P: Outclassed design variants that are as easy to get as their counterparts automatically receive D-tier as per rules of this list.
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FRIGATES
Spoiler
S-tier

Tempest: A clear winner for the meanest wolfpack stack, the closest this ship has to a downside is messing up your Fighter Uplink count with its built-in point defense drones that come completely free of charge. Yes, it's on a more expensive side to deploy, but, firstly, cost doesn't matter in a wolfpack, and, secondly, it probably wouldn't matter in bigger fleets either, since these would be mostly deployed to fight other frigates, and oh boy do Tempests excel at that. I build them mostly for Phase Lance salvos, which allows them to overload any frigate mono-o-mono, or dogpile and quickly dispose of a larger ship, without having to rely on hard flux or attrition strategies.

Brawler, Brawler TT: Better shield-breaking or better overall statline, these two Brawler designs are the heavy lifters of frigate class. They sport destroyer-level weaponry and almost destroyer-level shields, but cost only 6 DP each to deploy. Just like Tempests, they are very good at fighting enemy frigates, but unlike Tempests, they would actually be more valuable outside of wolfpack builds, unless you already have your fleet filled with bigger ships to the brim, and have to allocate all of your frigate roles to a couple of Medusas.

Hyperion: At first, I was going to give this ship only an A-tier, for how much it costs to deploy and especially maintain. Then I've thought it through some more, and concluded that deployment costs aren't a downside to wolfpack fleets at all - and this is what primary role of this ship is, a frigate wolfpack capital ship. And I specify "capital ship" because AI can't use this ship effectively at all, and is better given something less strategic, like a Tempest. Regardless, with this vessel, you get the luxury of both having a statline of a decent destroyer with extremely powerful shields, and having a small and nimble spacecraft that activates all the wolfpack bonuses you can possibly get.

A-tier

Monitor: This is more of a cheese ship, but it's pretty good regardless. Give it slow firing weapons and some shield improvements, and your AI will often flicker its Fortress system off to shoot once, and then turn it back on for the reload, wasting enemy fleet's time on futile attempts to take down this beefy yet nimble target, in turn buying your time to make their ranks thinner for your main engagement.

Wolf, Wolf H: Another ship that buys you precious time by stealing that of your enemies. It pokes and prods slower targets in enemy fleets, forcing them to either take damage, or give chase; both are more than enough value for 5DP, granted you have some space in your fleet for these annoying bastards. Unfortunately, they seem to get snuffed out in an instant when they try to come anywhere near bigger vessels, thus, even more so than any other frigate, they lose their effectiveness as your enemies get bigger.

Brawler LP: I don't know why would you want to use Safety Overrides on a Brawler, but this one has them built in for free, on top of having a more damage-oriented ship system. I still think it's inferior to other two Brawlers, but it's not entirely outclassed, hence a pretty high rating.

B-tier

Vigilance: Despite having some considerable weapons and shields for what it costs, Vigilance, unfortunately, doesn't have any means of using more powerful close-range rockets against bigger targets. Of course, you can go the "funny" route and have them spam Pilums, but, come on...

Afflictor, Shade: Two different, but at the same time pretty similar crafts. If you have phase skills and even officer to use these, they can be extremely annoying to the enemy, but why? Why would you do any of it? Should you find them early on, even without dedicated skills they can make some of the fights much easier, but replacing them as soon as possible seems like a no-brainer to me.

Omen: -"What if... *hits blunt* ...point defense, but a ship?" Look, I know I've already used this joke, but that's what Omen literally is - a small, portable, hard to kill without heavy beam weapons, constantly moving point defense that takes up a ship slot and costs points to deploy. Maybe I would've thought of a higher rating, if it was actually reliable and easy to use as point defense escort for larger ships, but, alas. At later stages of the game, this entire thing will only cost you 7OP to stick into a small energy hardpoint, so that's one way to find a silver lining, I guess.

Scarab: Yes, I've seen older videos about Scarab, and, trust me, this shoebox with guns randomly sticking out of it is nothing like a gunnery monster in those videos. For what it's worth, it's expensive to deploy, and it can fight maybe a Shrike on a sunny Tuesday.

Centurion: Scarab, but from a discount store around the corner.

C-tier

Gremlin, Gremlin P: Like those other phase frigates, but as fleet support; I would probably avoid getting it even at earlier stages of the game.

Wayfarer: A freighter you can actually throw into a frigate combat in early game. Sometimes it even wins.

Shepherd: Looks better on paper than it actually is, since it's practically harmless when it tries to engage the enemy. Salvage bonuses it provides become obsolete very quickly, especially considering there are better salvaging ships for those high-value derelicts.

D-tier

All Kites, all Lashers, all Hounds, all Cerberus's Mercury, Hermes and whatever other shuttles I'm forgetting: To avoid sounding like a broken record, I'll just include them all together, despite there clearly being objectively better and worse options among them, since they're getting into exactly the same tier, and for exactly the same reason: they are all garbage, and are meant to be garbage to get replaced as early as the player possibly can. Unless you specifically aim for challenge/meme value, replace any of these with any of the good frigates as soon as you can, and never look back.

Afflictor P, Shade P, Wolf P, Gremlin LP: Outclassed design variants that are as easy to get as their counterparts automatically receive D-tier as per rules of this list.
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Final words:
And that about concludes my list. I would appreciate opinions and critiques of other denizens of this forum, skilled or not, ho hopefully spark a fruitful discussion or just a lobster meme tirade. Did I place your favorite ship too low, and now you're out to claim my firstborn child? Or did I miss a ship entirely? Let me know!
And, if my thread draws a lot of attention, I might do the same lists for other important aspects of Starsector, be it weapons, hullmods, skills or whatever it is people want to hear an overthinking noob's opinion on.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: SCC on September 02, 2021, 10:49:42 AM
I think I'm going to comment only on things that surprised me.

Astral in S-tier? I haven't used it in a while, but is it really as good as death god Radiant? I really doubt it could stand up to Radiant, except maybe with all the skills and player piloted, maybe.
Your description of Ziggurat is a bit confusing me; do you not know that motes can attack ships and EMP them through shields? It makes it the best dueler in the game, since if the other ship isn't shooting at you, you win flux war by walkover. It is a logistic nightmare, though, and merely a bigger Doom.

I'm surprised Fury is just B-tier. I would have easily put it in S-tier; not because it has amazing absolute stats, but because its stats for its DP are indeed brilliant. It's like having 2/3rds of an Aurora for half the price (that's 50% more Aurora per Fury than Aurora per Aurora!). You can make an endgame worthy fleet of just Furies.

I wouldn't put Drover in A-tier, but mostly because its ship system is a fighter replacement suicide button (except maybe with skills and EDC?) and that carriers aren't so good anymore.

Brawler in S-tier? Whoa. It's just a long range distraction. That's decent, but not S worthy.
Wolf in A-tier? Once it runs out of missiles, it's only a distraction. Maybe it's worth something with woofpack tictacs, but Tempest is worth a lot without that, and gets even better with that.
Omen is easy A-tier to me (it's point defence, anti-fighter, EMP, mad efficiency in one ship system! Distraction, cruiser-level shields, support, all in one ship!), since on top of respectable combat capabilities it's useful on campaign layer, too (though that one I can guess you aren't taking into consideration, just the combat capabilities).
I've heard Scarab is about Tempest power level (sometimes better, sometimes worse), but I haven't bothered to try it out.
Wayfarer not in the bottom tier? lol
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Randaru on September 02, 2021, 10:56:42 AM
Your description of Ziggurat is a bit confusing me; do you not know that motes can attack ships and EMP them through shields? It makes it the best dueler in the game, since if the other ship isn't shooting at you, you win flux war by walkover. It is a logistic nightmare, though, and merely a bigger Doom.
As I've said, it has nothing on Radiant while costing almost twice as much, and it struggles against Paragon that also costs less. I've mentioned motes and that the AI doesn't seem to know what to do about them, but even if the player was to spam their system between an empty space and the enemy ship to deploy them as quckly as possible, keeping all of the systems disabled at all times looks like an impossible task. Meanwhile, one second of getting clipped by an EMP beam and all of your weapon systems are disabled for 30 seconds. I'd honestly rather have a Paragon, or, better yet, a player-controlled Radiant - even for the same deployment cost!

I'm surprised Fury is just B-tier. I would have easily put it in S-tier; not because it has amazing absolute stats, but because its stats for its DP are indeed brilliant. It's like having 2/3rds of an Aurora for half the price (that's 50% more Aurora per Fury than Aurora per Aurora!). You can make an endgame worthy fleet of just Furies.
That was my entire reasoning... when rating Apogee in S-tier!  ;)
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Grievous69 on September 02, 2021, 11:26:16 AM
Well that was actually a pretty good read, funny how it's always those who have English as their second or whatever language write more coherently than others. I'd love to see how would you rank the weapons and fighters of the game if you have free time.

Like SCC I'm just going to comment on very weird (to me) stuff since there's too much to talk about otherwise.

Atlas Mk II being in A tier while Odyssey is in B tier is just hilarious. I mean sure Atlas is a cool meme ship in early game but burn 6 kills it hard. It's basically "what if I have the design philosophy of a Sunder, but make everything about the ship bad". There's a reason why they're called pinatas. Although I agree Odyssey is a quirky ship, usually I pilot if myself so maybe I rate it higher than I would otherwise.

Hahahaha glad to see someone else shares the disappointing thoughts on Aurora, truly a definition of "overpriced".
But why are Falcons and the (P) versions clumped together? They're a VERY different ship.

God bless you for putting Sunder in S tier, I mean it.
Enforcer is a nice brick but it really doesn't deserve to be together with Hammerhead.
Shrike(P) being lower than a base Shrike is very surprising, since that ballistic slot means a lot to me. At worst I'd put them in the same tier, but I get how you're not happy with the ship's performance so I guess it makes sense.

Brawler wouldn't even be in S tier if it was 5 DP...
Ok ok this part is a mess so I'll stick everything in one sentence. What right does Wolf have to be so high up in A tier, while Scarab and Afflictor are in B tier, together with Vigilance?? I can't wrap my head around this no matter how hard I try.
Lasher being placed lower than a Wayfarer, alrighty then.

All in all this was pretty amazing for a first time player, I'd love to hear more thoughts in the future since you wrote everything in such high detail. And I'm sure this list will change once you play a bit more. Also next update will shake things up a bit balance wise so who knows for how long will this post stay relevant.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Randaru on September 02, 2021, 11:45:56 AM
Brawler wouldn't even be in S tier if it was 5 DP...
Ok ok this part is a mess so I'll stick everything in one sentence. What right does Wolf have to be so high up in A tier, while Scarab and Afflictor are in B tier, together with Vigilance?? I can't wrap my head around this no matter how hard I try.
Lasher being placed lower than a Wayfarer, alrighty then.

All in all this was pretty amazing for a first time player, I'd love to hear more thoughts in the future since you wrote everything in such high detail. And I'm sure this list will change once you play a bit more. Also next update will shake things up a bit balance wise so who knows for how long will this post stay relevant.

Frigate strats are overall a murky water to me, even more so with wolfpack tactics - I've tried them around, but my success was only periodical. I've mainly rated fast and annoying ships higher due to them wasting time against overwhelming opponents for long enough to even the odds and get some heat off your main battle lines. I started phasing frigates out for Medusas all together on my main savefile, so, there's that.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: pairedeciseaux on September 02, 2021, 11:55:03 AM
Quick comment,

People love to argue about ship tier list. Which can be useful because it can help people share the various strengths and weaknesses of ships, various ship outfits, and realise there is more than one way to play the game.

I would recommend new players to do several shorter playthroughs, rather than a single very long one like you did. Reasoning is: starting from scratch, player can do fleet & skills progression again, in a different way, based on different opportunities arising in the campaign and/or based on different player decisions.

This way one may play differently, have a different experience each time, and make the most of the game's replay value.

Then player may realise, there probably is a different ship tier list for each play-through, or even a different ship tier list depending on the play through stage (what use for an Onslaught during the first cycle?). Then tier list does not matter anymore, what matter is player having a good understanding of available tools, and having a good experience with the tools of his choice.

Worth remembering: Starsector creators try hard to have all/most ships being viable.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: SCC on September 02, 2021, 12:06:51 PM
As I've said, it has nothing on Radiant while costing almost twice as much, and it struggles against Paragon that also costs less. I've mentioned motes and that the AI doesn't seem to know what to do about them, but even if the player was to spam their system between an empty space and the enemy ship to deploy them as quckly as possible, keeping all of the systems disabled at all times looks like an impossible task. Meanwhile, one second of getting clipped by an EMP beam and all of your weapon systems are disabled for 30 seconds. I'd honestly rather have a Paragon, or, better yet, a player-controlled Radiant - even for the same deployment cost!
Talking about Ziggurat's balance is a bit tricky, since there's only one, so there's a decent chance player will be at the helm, if the ship's deployed at all.
As an AI ship, I just pit a 2 Plasma Cannon, 4 Heavy Needler, 6 Reaper build against the simulator Paragon and in one fight it won while sustaining some hull damage, in the other it took none at all. Ziggurat reacted to getting clipped by an EMP beam by just phasing - that 80% phase cooldown reduction means you can do it every time you need it, unless you're fluxed out. In combat, it's AI is a bit strange, but it works well enough, it can deal with an Onslaught or two by itself just fine.
As a playership, it's maybe a bit better than Doom, so it might be able to kill everything in the game, by its lonesome. I only managed to kill nearly everything with a Doom, as I died to the last Brilliant against the unique bounty and didn't care enough to try again.

Enforcer is a nice brick but it really doesn't deserve to be together with Hammerhead.
Shrike(P) being lower than a base Shrike is very surprising, since that ballistic slot means a lot to me. At worst I'd put them in the same tier, but I get how you're not happy with the ship's performance so I guess it makes sense.
I missed that! Yeah, it's weird Shrike (P) is lower on the list than regular Shrike. Previously, (P) was obviously better. Now it's about even, mainly because balance favours high-tech more now, so that small ballistic isn't such a crutch.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Igncom1 on September 02, 2021, 12:13:08 PM
I'll avoid all the other things I could comment on and just say thanks for putting MY BOY SUNDER where he belongs!  ;D

Nothing like a BFG attack wing to escort your battleships!
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: intrinsic_parity on September 02, 2021, 12:13:43 PM
My thoughts, just commenting on things I significantly disagree about:

Capitals:
Spoiler
Odyssey is S-tier for me as a player ship. By far the strongest combination of mobility and firepower the player can use IMO. As an AI ship, it's more like B tier though, so in that sense I agree. I would say the same thing about Aurora, it's A tier in player hands (possibly S tier with the right omega weapons), but probably B tier for the AI. Overall I would say mobility is extremely strong, and the player can exploit it much better than the AI.

I disagree about atlas MK II. You just have to spend so much OP to compensate for the burn/sensors/bad stats you don't have enough to actually outfit it properly, and the survivability is atrocious, it just dies against strong opponents. If it had 100 more OP, I could maybe see B tier or a weak A tier.

Another disagreement: ziggurat is almost S tier in player hands with phase skills, like Solo every fleet in the game strong. The only reason zigg is not s-tier is that Doom is similarly overpowered for half the cost, but zigg has one advantage of mote EMP. If there are some annoying enemies with HIL/Tac Lance/Ion beam that are actually threatening, you can just ion them to oblivion with motes while doom can have more trouble with those enemies. The strongest part of the zigg is that its phase cloak has virtually no cool down, so you can constantly jump in/out of phase to dodge stuff. It also lets you phase in briefly to fire burst guns and then phase while your weapon cool downs come online. Basically you can be invulnerable except when you are firing, and the elite phase skill lets you be fast enough in phase to position wherever you want and vent freely. I like to run 4x HVD + 2x tac lance for 1000 range kite/sniping plus I find that the cool downs on those weapons line feel good. I started running rift lances in one campaign and was amazed at how much damage they do too.

I'm not a fan of carriers on this patch, the only exception for carriers is the legion XIV which I actually put firmly in A tier. The reason for this is that 2x hurricanes with EMR and missile spec is nuts and it can mount kinetics with decent flux stats plus it has good survivability. The fighters are really an afterthought on that ship. I agree with SCC that astral is A tier at best, probably B tier, because of the ship system nerf plus the skill changes. I prefer legion XIV these days, although I think I may not have spent enough time with Astral to really have a strong opinion.
[close]

Cruisers:
Spoiler
For me, apogee is now probably only low A tier, mostly because unofficered ships are not that good in late game, and apogee is not impactful enough to justify officers IMO. It's also just slow, meaning it can't always get into a position to do damage, where other fast ships can be constantly doing damage, but that is only a downside if you are running a very aggressive fleet that leaves it behind.

Dominator is B tier at best. It costs too much fuel, and lacks mobility. Champion is just so much better at the same role for the same cost.

Falcon P should be A or S tier. 4 medium missiles is a lot, and sabots are busted.

I also agree with SCC, fury is definitely S tier because of mobility plus very good stats.
[close]

Destroyers:
Spoiler
Like SCC said, I think drover is quite bad this patch (in part because of a bug). It's 15 DP when heron is 20 which already makes me want to just use herons before considering anything else. I think the DP nerf and spark nerfs alone already were enough to knock it into B-C tier for me. The bug with the system that kills replacement rate puts it firmly in D-F tier for me.  I'm really not a fan of carriers on this patch. I think a big part of my dislike of carriers is that it feels like officers are mostly wasted on them compared to warships, but unofficered ships are often just fodder when the enemy has officers on most ships, plus the fleet-wide carrier skills are up against skills that are just better IMO so I never take them.

My only other comment is that I think enforcers flux stats drop them to B tier. They don't actually have that much firepower. Hammerhead is a much better ship.
[close]

Frigates:
Spoiler
Agree with SCC: wolf is not very good (C), omen is very good (A), brawler is meh (B).

Player piloted afflicter is S-tier because it can assassinate anything in the game for 8 DP. I agree with AI assessment though, AI afflicter is just a distraction because it (rightfully) doesn't take the risks that a player would take.

Scarab is better than tempest late game IMO, between S and A tier for me. Tempest has higher theoretical DPS, but lacks survivability. Scarab can get 360 shields, has better shield efficiency, and has a ship system which is basically accelerated ammo feeder and plasma jets in one system. The buffs to IR pulse lasers also help scarab out a lot, it actually can break shields and then use AM blaster to do big damage. You can also go for some missiles which can make a significant impact. Based on the combat statistics mod, scarabs do just as much damage as tempests in late game for me, and die much less often. This all assumes officers with wolfpack tactics though, otherwise, your analysis is probably not too far off, although I think scarab and tempest are still solid ships without wolfpack tactics.
[close]
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Randaru on September 02, 2021, 12:41:12 PM
Another disagreement: ziggurat is almost S tier in player hands with phase skills
Ziggurat was possibly my most thoroughly tested ship, maybe second most thoroughly tested after Doom, since that's what I used 90% of my playtime overall. It almost feels too good as what the devblog called a "brawler phase ship" - almost, and then I look at what pain must I go through to still be unable to beat a Radiant without massive cheese AND good RNG on my side, and I just kinda want to keep it indefinitely stored in one of my colonies, where I can just print a literal Paragon zerg rush if I ever chose to walk an inefficient route in fleet composition. And "inefficient" is the name of the game when using Ziggurat, hence my point about it being an easy candidate for an A-tier if its deployment didn't cause me a very physical rectal pain every signle time.

I disagree about atlas MK II. You just have to spend so much OP to compensate for the burn/sensors/bad stats you don't have enough to actually outfit it properly, and the survivability is atrocious, it just dies against strong opponents. If it had 100 more OP, I could maybe see B tier or a weak A tier.
A lot of people in and out of the forum already pointed it out, and, yes, I agree. As I rate ships on a variety of factors that are all relative to each other and to player's time spent, I've bloated Atlas's ranking based on its accessibility, perhaps, too much. But I refuse to change any informative value of the original post, even if I change my opinion - all of the edits are either my poor grammar or forum's formatting spontaneously imploding due to sheer quantity of it.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: RustyCabbage on September 02, 2021, 02:34:02 PM
Not going to argue about what tiers ships belong to, but some comments:

-Atlas II doesn't really justify its terrible burn speed, which is probably the number one reason why people would avoid adding it to their fleet early game, while later you simply have many better options. Could be good with Assault Package cheese and s-modded ADF, I suppose, but even that is sacrificing a lot.

-It's strange that you'd be having difficulty with getting value out of the Ziggurat, particularly in duels which is where it shines the most. Certainly the complaints about EMP are overstated--RFC/Damage Control/phasing all solve this problem easily. That said, I don't use the ship much personally.

-You can always justify a Legion with 5 Sabot Pods, and a Legion XIV with two Hurricane MIRVs. Though I agree fighters are kind of fragile at the moment with how strong the Point Defense skill is.

-Fun fact, with Assault Package cheese, the Prometheus II can have the highest armor of any ship in vanilla. I do love it but yeah it's not a very good ship.

-Falcon P deserves its own category with its four medium missile slots.

-Fury is heavily underrated given how economical it is. I'm a bit confused which part of it you find average, since it beats out the majority of the ships in its class size.

-Ventures will perform adequately with two medium missiles and fast missile racks, plus they have a solid logistics profile. Perfectly fine for a front-line ship provided you have other ships to do the killing.

-The Drover is, bluntly, rather terrible at the moment. It's strange that you bring up it's capabilities as a fighting ship (which really it doesn't have any) while ignoring its high cost and terrible fighter replacement which are points you thought were important enough on the Legion.

-Shrikes cost figurative pennies and have 10 burn. That's why they're nice to have.

-Buffalo II: 4 DP for a 70 OP destroyer with a medium missile and three smalls isn't shabby at all. Usually you'd have problems procurring enough of them to matter, but worth considering. :^)

-Your frigate ratings in general indicate a serious underestimation of Safety Overrides. Beyond that...
Afflictors probably have the highest value per DP for a player ship after the Doom. Omens have a built-in weapon that does 100*20 damage (+500*20 EMP) at 0.2 flux efficiency along with best-in-slot shields. Centurions are better distraction ships than Wolves. And I'm hurt that you'd somehow put the Lasher below a Wayfarer, which I feel is in like the bottom five of ships across all sizes.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: some guy on September 02, 2021, 03:45:21 PM
sooo you left the derelict ships outta there thoughts on those i think they have a bit of potential but from my observations in game they seem to be very team based...and slow.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Linnis on September 02, 2021, 05:14:55 PM
Very nice, you have considered the ships in wide range of parameters and situationa, and I agree with most of what you say are the pros and cons of ships.

Ziggurat I would personally rate only at B-teir. Simply because for the DP it is weak, and its TTK is also weak, its distraction and battle presences is mediocre as well. Maybe if the fleet limit was 15 ships, it would be a better choice.

Astral I would rate lower, because it needs to be escorted on occasions, taking up more effective DP. While most other carriers can take care of itself easily through speed ir tankiness.

Odessy would be a S class for me While Paragon B class. Running endgame fleets there is a reason why my odessy tend to do way more Damage per fight than Paragon. Speed is the answer.

Odessy is honestly faster than almost every single destoryer in combat. Its ability for AI to effectively use large autopluse, brawl with support fighter and good missle coverage, means that it is almost always the best damage per fight performer on the field. Yes, it cant stand 1v1 against another captial, but it will almost always create flanking oppertunities and make your battleline into a concave. There shouldn't much more to be said about battlelines concave vs convex statements. Paragon while powerful, is simply too slow and will find itself struggling to put weapon on target unless you want to do some deployment tricks that will make the fight last twice as long...




Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Thaago on September 02, 2021, 10:31:25 PM
I don't agree with everything, but this is a nice writeup!

I'd put Enforcers, Hammerheads, Shrikes, Sunders, and Medusas all in A rank. Maybe Medusas to B rank by endgame when their fragility vs cost gets them in trouble. They are all just good, but none are dominant.

For Shrikes in particular, I don't think they deserve to be in C tier... they have good missiles (high missiles/DP ratio too) and decent guns as long as you don't use a heavy blaster! Heavy blaster on a Shrike is a trap! In cost, burn, and DP they are more "big frigates" than anything else in role, but they are very competent in that role.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Randaru on September 02, 2021, 11:28:10 PM
Two things I want to notify readers about.

1) I do know that every automated ship besides Radiant is missing, it is lazy, yes, but is intentional nonetheless. The explanation part that's been lost from Radiant entry due to formatting issues is now restored.

2) This thread got some traction, and, since I've got more free time on my hands than I know what to productively do with, I'm already gathering material for a second part about... weapons! I'll just have to hurry up rolling it out, before I taint my biases and fallacies with such meaningless things as "constructive criticism" or "actually knowing how to play the game", since the more wrong my opinion is, the juicier the discussions on upcoming "Noob's Insights" are going to be.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Grievous69 on September 03, 2021, 02:37:53 AM
I love how people defending Shrikes put the most emphasis on "it's cheap". Well it's not cheap if it dies every second battle. There's not a single scenario where Shrike would be a better pick than a Scarab or Tempest, assuming one has access to all and enough money (it's not even that big of a difference).

@Randaru
Good point about having fresh opinions, I still remember how every time someone mentions Conquest as a horrible ship the thread gets 10 pages of heated discussion. Weapon tier lists probably won't spark the same amount of drama but it can still be amusing.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: isyourmojofly on September 03, 2021, 04:32:31 AM
Oh, dude, the Lasher is a really decent little frigate! Safety Overrides, MGs and assault guns combine with the accelerate ammo feeder to make this thing a mean little piranha of a frigate. Even without that, it's still a fairly sturdy utility frigate. Lasher isn't as good as the Hi Tech kids, but of course this is compensated in campaign play by it being substantially cheaper and easier to obtain.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Locklave on September 03, 2021, 04:51:06 AM
Oh, dude, the Lasher is a really decent little frigate! Safety Overrides, MGs and assault guns combine with the accelerate ammo feeder to make this thing a mean little piranha of a frigate. Even without that, it's still a fairly sturdy utility frigate. Lasher isn't as good as the Hi Tech kids, but of course this is compensated in campaign play by it being substantially cheaper and easier to obtain.

Lasher is only cheaper to obtain then a Tempest, not easier to obtain. Tempest is rather common.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: RustyCabbage on September 03, 2021, 08:07:59 AM
I love how people defending Shrikes put the most emphasis on "it's cheap". Well it's not cheap if it dies every second battle. There's not a single scenario where Shrike would be a better pick than a Scarab or Tempest, assuming one has access to all and enough money (it's not even that big of a difference).
Just build better Shrikes. 8)
It's still a medium missile/converted hangar platform and plasma burn lets it be competitive with the other two when chasing and punching down, and it has pretty solid shields in all honesty. If you're not running Wolf Pack you're slightly overestimating Tempests and Scarabs.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: FooF on September 03, 2021, 08:50:04 AM
For Shrikes in particular, I don't think they deserve to be in C tier... they have good missiles (high missiles/DP ratio too) and decent guns as long as you don't use a heavy blaster! Heavy blaster on a Shrike is a trap! In cost, burn, and DP they are more "big frigates" than anything else in role, but they are very competent in that role.

Wolfpack Tactics and Gunnery Implants (Elite) really undermine the "big frigate" perception, though. It doesn't gain any of the bonuses similarly DP'd Frigates get by virtue of being a frigate but still operates similarly to one. Prior to .95, I'd say the differences weren't worth mentioning but now? The game really incentivizes Frigates over Destroyers for the same DP.

It's similar to what I've said before in other threads, in a vacuum, the Shrike really isn't that bad but it's just not competitive in the meta-game. I'd rather spend a few more DP for a "real" Destroyer or use a skill point to make my premier frigates better.

Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Grievous69 on September 03, 2021, 09:19:06 AM
It's similar to what I've said before in other threads, in a vacuum, the Shrike really isn't that bad but it's just competitive in the meta-game. I'd rather spend a few more DP for a "real" Destroyer or use a skill point to make my premier frigates better.
Pretty much. I also don't think it's horrible but other options are much more reliable that as soon as I find an alternative, I ditch the Shrikes. The thing is, buffs for energy weapons helped ships that were struggling, and also made ships that were decent now very strong. Both Shrike and Wolf have more efficient assault options now but so does everything else.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Sozzer on September 05, 2021, 09:46:27 AM
I think that most of this is... "fine" opinions, in that a lot of the ships listed are more matters of taste than of actual raw performance (especially when you're inexperienced, where you'll mostly find that the ships you happen to take better to are the ones you get the most out of barring really strong stuff), but I'll note that the Shrike, Venture, Lasher, Shepherd, and Ziggurat are all ratings I strongly disagree with.

Shrike - In AI hands, a bit too suicidal to be ideal, for sure. But with an experienced player and a good fit, it can punch miles above its deployment weight, even compared to other ships in player hands, and especially considering its relatively easy availability in the earlygame.

Shepherd - Really doesn't deserve to be relegated to C-Tier just because it's not exceptional lategame. Earlygame, it's incredibly cheap, efficient, reliable, the drones are a deceptively handy support to keep shield pressure so the AI makes riskier decisions, and it's just all-around a handy pick.

Lasher - Impressively tough for its size and can dish out some NASTY ballistic firepower. I'd honestly say it's about on par with a wolf if you're using it well, the wolf is just going to be easier to get the most out of thanks to the AI having easy options to escape.

Venture - Yeah, it's never going to be the best brawler. Its killing power on its own is pretty poor at the best of times. But it is an absolutely insane brick. You can absolutely make it into a cheaply-deployed unkillable anchor with armour-per-section comparable to or even exceeding an Onslaught (keep in mind that while it may have a lower base value, it's spread over a smaller area, so it can reach some NASTY values), and it'll eat an ungodly amount of fire without breaking a sweat.

Ziggurat - Honestly, this one's purely a matter of skill. The motes can be immensely dangerous once you get good at using them; it just takes a bit of practice. The armament is also plenty powerful, and the phasing can be used to great advantage if you pilot phase ships more (and, moreover, if you pilot them and play them more directly, rather than playing them 100% around their systems - it'll make it much easier to learn how to use PHASE rather than the specific ships).

Oh, also the Gemini isn't "civilian-turned-military" - Venture is a rugged civilian ship designed to hold up acceptably in a fight, so its inclusion is fair enough, but the Gemini flight deck is frankly just a defensive asset, not something that makes it a carrier.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Thaago on September 05, 2021, 09:58:00 AM
...

Venture - Yeah, it's never going to be the best brawler. Its killing power on its own is pretty poor at the best of times. But it is an absolutely insane brick. You can absolutely make it into a cheaply-deployed unkillable anchor with armour-per-section comparable to or even exceeding an Onslaught (keep in mind that while it may have a lower base value, it's spread over a smaller area, so it can reach some NASTY values), and it'll eat an ungodly amount of fire without breaking a sweat.

...

Unfortunately thats not how armor works. Each cell in the armor grid gets 1/15 of the rated armor value, and then the damage from each hit is spread out over neighbors and nearest neighbors at a 2:1 ratio which sums to 15, so damage has to deal with the full rated value. This means that physically larger ships have more total armor, though of course only 1 section needs to fail for a ship to take hull damage and die.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Sozzer on September 05, 2021, 10:04:35 AM
snip

Unfortunately thats not how armor works. Each cell in the armor grid gets 1/15 of the rated armor value, and then the damage from each hit is spread out over neighbors and nearest neighbors at a 2:1 ratio which sums to 15, so damage has to deal with the full rated value. This means that physically larger ships have more total armor, though of course only 1 section needs to fail for a ship to take hull damage and die.

Isn't it? I could've sworn it was. It being broken down by 1/15 regardless of size is a bit odd, honestly.
Either way, the point stands for the Venture - I think I have a screenshot somewhere of me managing to get it to... 2328 armour, IIRC? With modded hullmods mind, but even so, it's just got so, so much base armour and barely needs to spend OP on anything but more of that.

EDIT: Yep. 2328 armour, 19250 hull. 750 less hull and 578 more armour than a baseline onslaught.
DOUBLE EDIT: Only 1 modded hullmod lmao. CCH from Vayra's. Otherwise, all Vanilla - Assault Package on a Venture, especially with the skill buff, is just... insane.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Thaago on September 05, 2021, 10:17:20 AM
Yeah your point about it being an absolute brick when built for it stands :). I was just being pedantic about mechanics!
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: SCC on September 05, 2021, 10:38:31 AM
483 718 HULL POINTS
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: TLW on September 05, 2021, 11:01:00 AM
Shrike - In AI hands, a bit too suicidal to be ideal, for sure. But with an experienced player [...]
I think this is part of the disagreements. Really, any such guide "should" be broken down with separate ratings for player and AI control. Otherwise you get person A saying ship X is terrible (because it is, in AI hands) and person B saying ship X is great (because it is, in player hands), and them largely taking past each other because they are both assuming the other person uses said ship in the same manner they do.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Thaago on September 05, 2021, 11:49:29 AM
I find AI shrikes to be survivable as long as I don't give them reckless officers and be very careful with eliminate orders. Its shield is strong but narrow, and its hull is paper, so I don't want it to be ignoring other threats when it goes after a target. As long as it doesn't have a heavy blaster (I'm on a personal crusade to remove heavy blasters from every shrike) then its surprisingly decent against fighters as well just because its going to have good turret coverage of high precision weapons and probably an ion cannon as well.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Daynen on September 05, 2021, 11:59:27 AM
First off, for one for whom English is not your first language, you're doing pretty damn good with it.  I see nothing worse in your text than I'd see on a typical board or chatroom.  I could correct a few grammatical weaknesses, but you did your best in good faith so I see no need to nitpick here.  Secondly, you put the Atlas mk II in the A-tier.  YOU, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar and I tip my hat to you for recognizing an underappreciated beauty.

You may stay.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: lz14 on September 05, 2021, 06:51:16 PM
Aurora does look poor with only 2 awkward medium energy slots and costing 30dp.

There are no good long range medium energy weapons.
Hence the power of Aurora comes with its speed and short range. Put Safety Overide on it and 4x antimatter blaster on the forward facing small energy.  You'll find it's the fastest killing ship there is. Only Radiant may kill faster. AI also pilots this ship perfectly. 

SO Aurora with NO officer is already S tier.
Doom is only S tier with a system skill officer.
Champion kills much more slowly, if at all in AI hands. No officer skills can bring it up a tier either. It's only A tier.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Randaru on September 06, 2021, 03:44:15 AM
Really, any such guide "should" be broken down with separate ratings for player and AI control. Otherwise you get person A saying ship X is terrible (because it is, in AI hands) and person B saying ship X is great (because it is, in player hands), and them largely taking past each other because they are both assuming the other person uses said ship in the same manner they do.
Sounds good, doesn't work. You have to be realistic about time I spend on these, which was already a lot. These were meant to be biased, and to be fun to dismantle - anything more in-depth would've probably costed me twice as long to prepare and write, while only being half as fun for the reader.

And don't get me wrong, even if I don't respond to every single comment, it doesn't mean I'm not taking notes. I learn a lot from both the nicest and the meanest comments - getting schooled both here and on Discord bumped up my game drastically. Surprisingly, the harsher the hazing, the better the info I actually learn from it, and I've managed to achieve greater results with my fleet builds since I've started taking criticism. 'Sides, I've already had a couple requests to write down a summary of what I've learned since, but I still need to both give newly acquired wisdom some time to cook in the oven, as well as roll out a Noob's Insight on hullmods - I'm less hyped about doing them, in perspective, but they're also only half the work I had to put into compared to, say, this thread.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Igncom1 on September 06, 2021, 04:01:42 AM
I find that if you get really into missiles that can help 'level-up' your fleet in this game as basically all of the ship groups have at least a couple ships with decent missile mounts.

What does it matter if your ship is better then mine, when a volley of missiles is THE great equalizer.

It's what turns luddic cruisers from total jokes, to total jokes that'll blow your ass off if you are cocky.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Jo Jo on September 14, 2021, 06:30:58 PM
I built a heavy industry at my first colony and was so excited when I found the BP for an Odyssey, then after I paid 350k credits to build it I discovered it was on the B-Tier. Wondering if there were any build that could take out an A-tier Onslaught, I kept experimenting until my ship could do it with the AI piloting both. To my surprise the solution was to take the carrier portion away little by little until I was only spending 2 OP per flight deck. That's a sad commentary on the state of carriers in the current build.

The AI always pilots my ships and I'm happy I didn't just recycle my 350k credit investment. Think I'll take it with me to see what it can do against the bounty fleets. ;)
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: bob888w on September 14, 2021, 11:26:48 PM
I'd say oddessy is more A- when player controlled. No other capital can hit a rear of a formation even close to as well as the Oddessy and do so while bringing multiple plasma cannons to bear
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Burvjradzite on September 21, 2021, 10:53:14 AM
I want to punch you in the shoulder for disregarding our lord and savior almighty Scarab. One that point makes all your text above just wrong. All that applies to Falcon P also, but slightly in lesser scale, cuz you obviously cannot spam Falcon Ps. Omen is not a pd, you dummy, it's a good combat ship for its DP, and ai knows how to use it's system.
As says your title you are new player, so i guess, i'm not that mad. I'm sorry if you feel offended. Well, at least you do not pray to Conquest, that's alright.
Apogee is common newbie misconception. Apogee is nowhere near S tier, it's an exploration freighter, a good one, nothing more. Brawler is a trash-tier, that's not even funny why you put it on S, there are individuals who will write an essay why lasher is better than it.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Wapno on September 21, 2021, 09:59:43 PM
 Nice list! Agree about most of that stuff, although some things have baffled me.

- Hyperion? In S-TIER?! Are you out of your mind?! That pile of garbage is B-tier at most. Yes, it has impressive, destroyer-grade flux stats and weapon mounts, but almost the logistics of a freaking capital ship, the most pathetic peak performance time in the game, and on top of it all, is made out of paper. Its ship system is pretty useless now for anything else than quickly closing the distance, and/or instantly putting itself in a dangerous spot where it cannot easily escape from and it dies. I don't see any practical use for it. The amount of nerfing this ship has received between the updates is absolutely comical.
- Scarab is not a B-tier. That thing kills stuff faster than the Tempest, and with its ship system it can keep up the pace with the latter. The logistical difference between the ships is negligible (in fact, they both cost the same amount of DP to deploy).

I also find it somewhat amusing that the Odyssey is in B-tier, while when player-piloted, it's easily capable of ripping apart everything in all higher tiers (without character skills, it does get a few small bruises when pummeling the Paragon, but that's it). With Helmsmanship and System Expertise, it outruns some of the frigates. I do have to agree that it has an awkward setup (main guns being only on the port side) which makes it difficult to handle, and the AI is mostly incapable of effectively taking advantage of its speed.

Lastly, I wholeheartedly agree about the Ziggurat. In fact, I'm surprised that it's not in an even lower tier. Aside from its nightmare logistics and comical DP/CR stats, the fact that it nullfies disabled transponder makes it a completely useless ship, and a major disappointment of the update. Honestly, the "easily recognizable" trait is a pretty horrible balancing choice.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Low Settings on September 22, 2021, 04:16:03 AM
Intro:
Harbinger: Whereas Doom is a ship that has great strategic value in the hands of a competent player, Harbinger is a ship that is completely busted by design, no matter which hands we are talking about.

I lol'd  ;D
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: FooF on September 22, 2021, 05:49:48 AM

- Hyperion? In S-TIER?! Are you out of your mind?! That pile of garbage is B-tier at most. Yes, it has impressive, destroyer-grade flux stats and weapon mounts, but almost the logistics of a freaking capital ship, the most pathetic peak performance time in the game, and on top of it all, is made out of paper. Its ship system is pretty useless now for anything else than quickly closing the distance, and/or instantly putting itself in a dangerous spot where it cannot easily escape from and it dies. I don't see any practical use for it. The amount of nerfing this ship has received between the updates is absolutely comical.

Hyperion is absolutely A tier, possibly S when you stack all the relevant skills on top of it. If you put SO on it, it can use its teleport at will. With shield upgrades/skills and can take a surprising amount of damage and getting behind bigger ships to unload Heavy Blasters or Ion Pulsers is just too easy. Personally, I put a Heavy MG in the universal slot to bring down shields but you can do a lot with that mount. I like it without SO but getting out of situations is trickier because of the need for 0-flux boost to teleport. Other than that, it’s ridiculously good and easily worth the DP cost.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Burvjradzite on September 22, 2021, 10:57:54 AM
Nice list! Agree about most of that stuff, although some things have baffled me.

- Hyperion? In S-TIER?! Are you out of your mind?! That pile of garbage is B-tier at most. Yes, it has impressive, destroyer-grade flux stats and weapon mounts, but almost the logistics of a freaking capital ship, the most pathetic peak performance time in the game, and on top of it all, is made out of paper. Its ship system is pretty useless now for anything else than quickly closing the distance, and/or instantly putting itself in a dangerous spot where it cannot easily escape from and it dies. I don't see any practical use for it. The amount of nerfing this ship has received between the updates is absolutely comical.
- Scarab is not a B-tier. That thing kills stuff faster than the Tempest, and with its ship system it can keep up the pace with the latter. The logistical difference between the ships is negligible (in fact, they both cost the same amount of DP to deploy).

I beg your pardon? Do you actually used Hyperion? I know many players got repelled by x2 maintenance and ppt, i was one of them. But Hyperion really worth that much, it's a cruiser punch in a frigate body. With wolfpack and skilled officer it rips space and time on the battlefield. Clearly it's an SSS+ tier and 100% pick in frigate tactics, and it even good choice for admiral without red skills because how convenient piloting it is. PPT boosted like crazy also with said officers and wolfpack, and with reliable subsystems.
Scarab also sss+ tier just because 18 no cooldown sabots build exist.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: RemnantAI on September 22, 2021, 02:38:17 PM
Odyssey B tier. That's a good one.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Wapno on September 25, 2021, 08:28:09 AM

- Hyperion? In S-TIER?! Are you out of your mind?! That pile of garbage is B-tier at most. Yes, it has impressive, destroyer-grade flux stats and weapon mounts, but almost the logistics of a freaking capital ship, the most pathetic peak performance time in the game, and on top of it all, is made out of paper. Its ship system is pretty useless now for anything else than quickly closing the distance, and/or instantly putting itself in a dangerous spot where it cannot easily escape from and it dies. I don't see any practical use for it. The amount of nerfing this ship has received between the updates is absolutely comical.

Hyperion is absolutely A tier, possibly S when you stack all the relevant skills on top of it. If you put SO on it, it can use its teleport at will. With shield upgrades/skills and can take a surprising amount of damage and getting behind bigger ships to unload Heavy Blasters or Ion Pulsers is just too easy. Personally, I put a Heavy MG in the universal slot to bring down shields but you can do a lot with that mount. I like it without SO but getting out of situations is trickier because of the need for 0-flux boost to teleport. Other than that, it’s ridiculously good and easily worth the DP cost.

SO on a ship which already has the lowest PPT in the game and a tremendous CR per deployment cost? I'm surprised that thing doesn't start falling apart before it even gets to shoot at anything...

I beg your pardon? Do you actually used Hyperion? I know many players got repelled by x2 maintenance and ppt, i was one of them. But Hyperion really worth that much, it's a cruiser punch in a frigate body. With wolfpack and skilled officer it rips space and time on the battlefield. Clearly it's an SSS+ tier and 100% pick in frigate tactics, and it even good choice for admiral without red skills because how convenient piloting it is. PPT boosted like crazy also with said officers and wolfpack, and with reliable subsystems.
Scarab also sss+ tier just because 18 no cooldown sabots build exist.

Yes, the whole reason why I'm posting this is how many times I've been coming back to this frigate, and every single time the game kept reminding me how it's absolutely not worth it to touch it with a 10 meter stick.

Nope, It's not a cruiser punch in a frigate body lol. It's a destroyer punch with a survivability of a kite, a cost of (almost) a battlecruiser, cosplaying as a frigate, bundled with a gimmick system.

Being able to teleport behind enemy ship and blast it with ion pulsers sounds amazing, until you realize low tech ships aren't the only enemies, and omni shields exist. And if you REALLY want to do that, just go grab a Harbinger. That one doesn't even have to get behind the opponent to disable it.

There is nothing this frigate can do which another ship in the game cannot already do for a fraction of the cost (and can be deployed more than once). The fact that it needs officers and specific character skills to function just adds insult to the injury, and only proves my point.

Pretty much the only things Hyperion has going for are the teleporter (which gets more and more crippled with every update, and - again - right now is most useful for jumping right into a spot where Hyperion will die the quickest), and its flux stats, which indeed, are VERY impressive, but are still nowhere near a justification for its absolutely monstrous costs.

It's a definition of impracticality. It's kinda like a Hummer in real life - it's pretty, it's loud, expensive, burns a TON of fuel and unless you're going to use it to tow a freight locomotive, you really would rather drive any common city car for every day routine.

Hence, I'd place it at B rank at most.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: intrinsic_parity on September 25, 2021, 08:39:03 AM
SO hyperion is very good. Even in AI hands it will reliably get more kills and do more damage than my cruisers (based on combat statistics mod), so the logistics cost is entirely justified. In player hands it will solo fleets. Wolfpack tactics is necessary for PPT, but the CR skill makes it so exceeding PPT is not a deal breaker and I will typically run it over the PPT limit.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: bob888w on September 26, 2021, 04:14:43 AM
Quote
Nope, It's not a cruiser punch in a frigate body lol. It's a destroyer punch with a survivability of a kite, a cost of (almost) a battlecruiser, cosplaying as a frigate, bundled with a gimmick system.

Being able to teleport behind enemy ship and blast it with ion pulsers sounds amazing, until you realize low tech ships aren't the only enemies, and omni shields exist. And if you REALLY want to do that, just go grab a Harbinger. That one doesn't even have to get behind the opponent to disable it.

There is nothing this frigate can do which another ship in the game cannot already do for a fraction of the cost (and can be deployed more than once). The fact that it needs officers and specific character skills to function just adds insult to the injury, and only proves my point.

Pretty much the only things Hyperion has going for are the teleporter (which gets more and more crippled with every update, and - again - right now is most useful for jumping right into a spot where Hyperion will die the quickest), and its flux stats, which indeed, are VERY impressive, but are still nowhere near a justification for its absolutely monstrous costs.

It's a definition of impracticality. It's kinda like a Hummer in real life - it's pretty, it's loud, expensive, burns a TON of fuel and unless you're going to use it to tow a freight locomotive, you really would rather drive any common city car for every day routine.

Hence, I'd place it at B rank at most.

you are running your hyperions with SO and officers right? The fact that it needs skills to function isn't a very big deal since the chances you end up in the leadership path is already really high right now. You also claim that it can do anything which othwr ships can't already do which is false, It is the only ship that can beat the enemies to points in their side and win the ensuing frigate engagement as well. And under SO, the Hyperion can always teleport itself out of danger which unlike a overfluxed harbinger of doom can't do
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Megas on September 26, 2021, 07:26:08 AM
you are running your hyperions with SO and officers right? The fact that it needs skills to function isn't a very big deal since the chances you end up in the leadership path is already really high right now.
It is a big deal for those who do not or cannot take Leadership because they ran out of skill points.

I tried to use Hyperion, but without Leadership skills, it was not worth it because SO is needed for classic Hyperion use (of teleport spam and all guns blazing), but without the bonuses from Wolfpack Tactics it lacked PPT.  Also, non-SO Hyperion was a pain to use because it could not support three medium elite guns well (not enough dissipation, so the universal needs to be a missile, or the mounts undergunned) and ship needs to drop shields to get out (even with elite Helmsmanship) and take damage.

So yes, Hyperion is only good with specific skills.  If player does not or cannot get them, do not bother with Hyperion.  This is unlike previous releases when Hyperion was usable out-of-the-box.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Burvjradzite on September 26, 2021, 10:21:53 AM

Yes, the whole reason why I'm posting this is how many times I've been coming back to this frigate, and every single time the game kept reminding me how it's absolutely not worth it to touch it with a 10 meter stick.
Well that means you do not have played enough yet or always played wrong with Hyperion.

Nope, It's not a cruiser punch in a frigate body lol. It's a destroyer punch with a survivability of a kite, a cost of (almost) a battlecruiser, cosplaying as a frigate, bundled with a gimmick system.
A kite? You here being hyperbolizing on ill state. Hyperion is unsinkable, literally. It got monstrous flux stats and impenetrable shield.

There is nothing this frigate can do which another ship in the game cannot already do for a fraction of the cost (and can be deployed more than once). The fact that it needs officers and specific character skills to function just adds insult to the injury, and only proves my point.
There's nothing that proves your point. Hyperion is unique ship which can travel entire battle map within couple of jumps. In a fights where forces are separate across the map it's priceless. It's a frigate and got battleAI as a frigate, it take harassing turns, it seeks vulnerabilities, it swarms in pair of other frigates. I got all proof of that in a video format loaded on youtube.

Pretty much the only things Hyperion has going for are the teleporter (which gets more and more crippled with every update, and - again - right now is most useful for jumping right into a spot where Hyperion will die the quickest), and its flux stats, which indeed, are VERY impressive, but are still nowhere near a justification for its absolutely monstrous costs.

What cost are you talking right now? 15 DP? FITHTEEN DEPLOYMENT POINTS? Is this TOO much to handle?? A cost of a destroyer? Please do not mention 30 supplies, it's irrelevant in a battle and doesn't even much in a game economy. You can pay this even at the beginning of the game and feel no poverty.
It's a definition of impracticality. It's kinda like a Hummer in real life - it's pretty, it's loud, expensive, burns a TON of fuel and unless you're going to use it to tow a freight locomotive, you really would rather drive any common city car for every day routine.
Yes, it's a hummer, but not in real life, it's a hummer in post-apocaliptic world there you can't care less about gasoline and parking spots.
Hence, I'd place it at B rank at most.
It's an S and nothing you can do about it.


Ok, i just checked that MY officered Hyperion does: 388 PPT, 0.33 shield, 9520 flux/695 flux regen, shield flux 150.
Heavy machinegun, heavy blaster, ion pulser(cryoflamer)
(https://i.imgur.com/9wIofIx.png)
[close]
Btw, it's me right now:
(https://i.imgur.com/EILtcPz.png)
[close]

Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: RustyCabbage on September 26, 2021, 11:15:10 AM
Just FYI, these are the sorts of fleets you can take in a single engagement with an appropriately-skilled, vanilla SO-Hyperion wolf pack.

(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/304690022299336705/877678123573973013/unknown.png)
(plus like three more rows of frigates and destroyers that didn't fit into the screenshot)

SO Hyperions are pretty good! (but as Megas says, probably not something you want to emphasize too much without a few Leadership skills)
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Thaago on September 26, 2021, 11:44:22 AM
Tsk, losing 30 crew vs multiple ordos. :p
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: SafariJohn on September 26, 2021, 12:08:21 PM
3 were rescued, so it was only 27 lost. ;)
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Wapno on September 27, 2021, 04:29:22 PM
Well that means you do not have played enough yet or always played wrong with Hyperion.
The "it aint tru, u just bad at gaym" is so far the most childish argument I saw in defense of this ship.

A kite? You here being hyperbolizing on ill state. Hyperion is unsinkable, literally. It got monstrous flux stats and impenetrable shield.
I am still baffled with just where are you pulling those bizarre statements from. No, it is not unsinkable, literally. Its shield is nowhere near impenetrable cause *cough*destroyergradefluxstats*cough*, and as soon as it goes down (or - heaven forbid - AI overloads), the only thing standing between it and death is paper armor and 2.5k hull integrity.

There's nothing that proves your point. Hyperion is unique ship which can travel entire battle map within couple of jumps. In a fights where forces are separate across the map it's priceless. It's a frigate and got battleAI as a frigate, it take harassing turns, it seeks vulnerabilities, it swarms in pair of other frigates. I got all proof of that in a video format loaded on youtube.
There is nothing you're doing to disprove my perfectly valid point either. Aside from teleporting (which in practice just means a lot of speed) nothing of what you're described other ships aren't doing already. Why would I choose a super-fast, stupidly expensive ship, if I can field a much stronger ship, which is slower, but still fast enough to reach the objective point before the enemy, AND doesn't have a whole baggage of other issues with it?

What cost are you talking right now? 15 DP? FITHTEEN DEPLOYMENT POINTS? Is this TOO much to handle?? A cost of a destroyer? Please do not mention 30 supplies, it's irrelevant in a battle and doesn't even much in a game economy. You can pay this even at the beginning of the game and feel no poverty.
Yes it is? Because for just one more DP, I can field two Tempests/Scarabs, which I can send to two opposite goals at the same time (which they will also get to quite fast) and will stay in battle for a lot longer. On top of that, 40 bloody CR per deployment. Hope you don't have to fight more than a single battle in quick succession, cause unless you're min-maxing for high CR, a single deployment already dips the Hyperion into yellow CR and malfunctions.

And 30 supplies is not irrelevant, unless you're only playing missions and not touching the campaign. Of course you can pay this, but when there are ships being able to do the same job more efficiently (and do NOT rely on a pile of specific skills to do that), it's just not worth it.

Yes, it's a hummer, but not in real life, it's a hummer in post-apocaliptic world there you can't care less about gasoline and parking spots.
Until you realize all gas stations are defunct and every drop of gasoline is now worth its weight in gold ;)

It's an S and nothing you can do about it.
Oh, but of course I can - I can back up my claims with arguments from the previous post, which you failed to do much about, besides yelling and childish meme'ing, with a bit of argumentum ad hominem.

you are running your hyperions with SO and officers right? The fact that it needs skills to function isn't a very big deal since the chances you end up in the leadership path is already really high right now.
It is a big deal for those who do not or cannot take Leadership because they ran out of skill points.

I tried to use Hyperion, but without Leadership skills, it was not worth it because SO is needed for classic Hyperion use (of teleport spam and all guns blazing), but without the bonuses from Wolfpack Tactics it lacked PPT.  Also, non-SO Hyperion was a pain to use because it could not support three medium elite guns well (not enough dissipation, so the universal needs to be a missile, or the mounts undergunned) and ship needs to drop shields to get out (even with elite Helmsmanship) and take damage.

So yes, Hyperion is only good with specific skills.  If player does not or cannot get them, do not bother with Hyperion.  This is unlike previous releases when Hyperion was usable out-of-the-box.

Thank you. This exactly. I took points out of leadership during my current run, as I wanted to boost other ship builds, which require different skills. Saying "Hyperion is uber with Wolfpack Tactics" isn't saying much - there are a lot of ships in the game which can be made overpowered with specific skills.

Bottom line: Hyperion might even be great in specific circumstances, but if it requires a specific set of skills to be usable to begin with, then it should be reflected in its rank, which in this case would definitely be way lower than an S.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: intrinsic_parity on September 27, 2021, 05:07:14 PM
Bottom line: Hyperion might even be great in specific circumstances, but if it requires a specific set of skills to be usable to begin with, then it should be reflected in its rank, which in this case would definitely be way lower than an S.
There are two ways of thinking about things here: considering maximum power of a ship when optimized, vs considering average power of a ship over a bunch of different conditions. Neither is necessarily wrong, they are just different ways of thinking about things.

I personally value the maximum power as a representation of a ships capability, particularly for ships with game breaking potential like instant TP. For instance phase ships are OP in part because of the skills, but I don't evaluate them based on not having the skills because if I'm bothering to use them, I'm definitely using the skills that make them as strong as possible.

IMO hyperion's peak power is very far above almost any other ship short of some moderately unbalanced or equally cheesy stuff like phase ships. Instant TP is just extremely powerful. I have had 0 issues with giving it to the AI too, it almost never dies because it has a get-out-of-jail-free card in the TP. The AI gets tons of production out of it reliably, enough to justify using it over multiple tempests or scarabs in a wolfpack fleet in my experience (based on combat statistics from the combat statistics mod like damage dealt and kills).

With regards to loadouts, I think most combinations of heavy needler, heavy machine gun, ion pulser, heavy blaster, and cryo blaster are very good with SO. 2x HB + HMG/needler/ion pulser is very good if you don't have omega guns, HB + CB + HMG/needler/ion pulser is much better once you get cryo blasters.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Thaago on September 27, 2021, 05:34:11 PM
An interesting consequence of the Hyperion costing 40% per deployment is that it costs very little supplies to start ticking down CR during a fight. Ticking a whole 40% only costs 15! For comparison ticking down 40% on a Lasher costs 16. So while the PPT with SO may be short, its actually very economical to just run the thing straight into malfunction territory. For this reason the most valuable hyperion skill is a skill that I get on every officer no matter what anyways: Reliability Engineering. The PPT increase may only be half as much, but the -25% to tickdown rate is huge, especially when combined with hardened subsystems.

I feel like with phase ships, they need a suite of skills to make them very powerful, while Hyperion just needs a good build.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Megas on September 27, 2021, 05:47:26 PM
An interesting consequence of the Hyperion costing 40% per deployment is that it costs very little supplies to start ticking down CR during a fight. Ticking a whole 40% only costs 15! For comparison ticking down 40% on a Lasher costs 16. So while the PPT with SO may be short, its actually very economical to just run the thing straight into malfunction territory. For this reason the most valuable hyperion skill is a skill that I get on every officer no matter what anyways: Reliability Engineering. The PPT increase may only be half as much, but the -25% to tickdown rate is huge, especially when combined with hardened subsystems.
I put Reliability Engineering on all of my officers (and my character for that matter), but for a different primary reason:  Guaranteed recovery without the need to shove Reinforced Bulkheads on the ship.  Runner up is +15% to max CR, which is good for everything, but really nice when piloting Ziggurat, and almost mandatory for Radiant.  The extra PPT and slower CR decay is nice too, I like them more than Damage Control's bonuses.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Burvjradzite on September 27, 2021, 08:10:47 PM
What cost are you talking right now? 15 DP? FITHTEEN DEPLOYMENT POINTS? Is this TOO much to handle?? A cost of a destroyer? Please do not mention 30 supplies, it's irrelevant in a battle and doesn't even much in a game economy. You can pay this even at the beginning of the game and feel no poverty.
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Yes it is? Because for just one more DP, I can field two Tempests/Scarabs, which I can send to two opposite goals at the same time (which they will also get to quite fast) and will stay in battle for a lot longer. On top of that, 40 bloody CR per deployment. Hope you don't have to fight more than a single battle in quick succession, cause unless you're min-maxing for high CR, a single deployment already dips the Hyperion into yellow CR and malfunctions.

And 30 supplies is not irrelevant, unless you're only playing missions and not touching the campaign. Of course you can pay this, but when there are ships being able to do the same job more efficiently (and do NOT rely on a pile of specific skills to do that), it's just not worth it.
Look, I've provided screenshot, video and a meme to assure my dominance. And you still not inpressed, huh? Well, that just means we are in I'm right you're wrong situation.

I'm agree that scarab is stronger, but telling that you can field two Scarabs instead of one Hyperion is just fundamentally wrong and the reason why is officer cap. You cannot fill all dp with officered scarabs so it just needed to be implemented with higher dp ships.

So as I said, I'm right you're wrong.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: intrinsic_parity on September 27, 2021, 09:25:23 PM
I feel like with phase ships, they need a suite of skills to make them very powerful, while Hyperion just needs a good build.

Oh, on the contrary, I feel like phase ships just need a specific officer, hyperion needs the player to take wolfpack tactics, so it's more of a constraint on the players build. To fly a phase ship personally, you do end up more restricted though, so in that sense, I agree.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Megas on September 28, 2021, 04:28:12 AM
Without skills, Doom is good and worth the 35 DP, just as deadly as last release.  With skills (specifically elite Helmsmanship, elite Phase Mastery, and Systems Expertise), Doom is too powerful.

Without skills, Harbinger is merely an easier-to-use AMB Afflictor that costs 20 DP instead of 8 DP.  With skills (same as Doom), it can brawl from near medium range with Phase Lances; basically a poor-man's Doom that cannot handle fighters.

However...
Ziggurat needs skills (elite Helmsmanship and Phase Mastery) just for QoL in using it.  Without skills, Ziggurat is slow as molasses and not fun to use.  It is like Hyperion in that way.

Also, unskilled fighters die to 30% rate after about a minute or so of fighting late game enemies, making them even more similar to missiles, but without the control and burst.  Thus, carriers need skills to be worth using, maybe.  Without skills, fighters are about as weak as they were in the 0.7 releases, and carriers are overshadowed by conventional warships, let alone phase ships.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Hellya on September 30, 2021, 12:43:43 PM
Without skills, Doom is good and worth the 35 DP, just as deadly as last release.  With skills (specifically elite Helmsmanship, elite Phase Mastery, and Systems Expertise), Doom is too powerful.

Without skills, Harbinger is merely an easier-to-use AMB Afflictor that costs 20 DP instead of 8 DP.  With skills (same as Doom), it can brawl from near medium range with Phase Lances; basically a poor-man's Doom that cannot handle fighters.

However...
Ziggurat needs skills (elite Helmsmanship and Phase Mastery) just for QoL in using it.  Without skills, Ziggurat is slow as molasses and not fun to use.  It is like Hyperion in that way.

Also, unskilled fighters die to 30% rate after about a minute or so of fighting late game enemies, making them even more similar to missiles, but without the control and burst.  Thus, carriers need skills to be worth using, maybe.  Without skills, fighters are about as weak as they were in the 0.7 releases, and carriers are overshadowed by conventional warships, let alone phase ships.

This has absolutely been my findings. Fighters are pretty meh and thus carriers, standard gun ships are mid row, and phase is doom stack material.

Phase ships without skills, especially the Doom, are far better than any carrier or hybrid per point. Even better than non carrier types without skills.

I am thinking the people who say the Doom is bad in AI hands have not field 3 or more at a time, and/or are fitting and skilling them poorly for AI. It is comical how fast the battle is over with perked phase ships. They are much more OP than fighters last patch by a large margin.

I would be shocked if phase ships were not brought back in line with the other ships at or before the next major patch. They are really all you need to kill any and everything no matter the size.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Wapno on September 30, 2021, 06:07:16 PM
Look, I've provided screenshot, video and a meme to assure my dominance. And you still not inpressed, huh? Well, that just means we are in I'm right you're wrong situation.

I'm agree that scarab is stronger, but telling that you can field two Scarabs instead of one Hyperion is just fundamentally wrong and the reason why is officer cap. You cannot fill all dp with officered scarabs so it just needed to be implemented with higher dp ships.

So as I said, I'm right you're wrong.
2 scarabs with one of them having an officer is still better bang for the buck in my opinion, so it being "fundamentally wrong" is just your view. Not every playthrough is a frigate swarm of 20 scarabs, you know.

Like you apparently, I also think you're consistently ignoring most of my arguments, so to that, I'll just quote you - I'm right you're wrong ^^

Also lmao, "assure my dominance". Sounds like you might have some complexes man.

An interesting consequence of the Hyperion costing 40% per deployment is that it costs very little supplies to start ticking down CR during a fight. Ticking a whole 40% only costs 15! For comparison ticking down 40% on a Lasher costs 16. So while the PPT with SO may be short, its actually very economical to just run the thing straight into malfunction territory. For this reason the most valuable hyperion skill is a skill that I get on every officer no matter what anyways: Reliability Engineering. The PPT increase may only be half as much, but the -25% to tickdown rate is huge, especially when combined with hardened subsystems.

I feel like with phase ships, they need a suite of skills to make them very powerful, while Hyperion just needs a good build.

Yup, interesting point. Although I believe it has to be taken into account that Lasher's CR is going to start decaying later, meaning an overall supply cost per time spent in battle might still be in its favor versus Hyperion. Still, I'm more concerned about the volatility of using Hyperion in a state where it risks malfunctions, considering how brittle it is without the shield (have an engine flame out while your teleporter is still on cooldown, and you're risking taking an alpha strike that will kill you).

I still hold that this ship absolutely needs certain skills to be in a usable condition, and is just not worth the price tag without them.

Without skills, Doom is good and worth the 35 DP, just as deadly as last release.  With skills (specifically elite Helmsmanship, elite Phase Mastery, and Systems Expertise), Doom is too powerful.

Without skills, Harbinger is merely an easier-to-use AMB Afflictor that costs 20 DP instead of 8 DP.  With skills (same as Doom), it can brawl from near medium range with Phase Lances; basically a poor-man's Doom that cannot handle fighters.

However...
Ziggurat needs skills (elite Helmsmanship and Phase Mastery) just for QoL in using it.  Without skills, Ziggurat is slow as molasses and not fun to use.  It is like Hyperion in that way.

Also, unskilled fighters die to 30% rate after about a minute or so of fighting late game enemies, making them even more similar to missiles, but without the control and burst.  Thus, carriers need skills to be worth using, maybe.  Without skills, fighters are about as weak as they were in the 0.7 releases, and carriers are overshadowed by conventional warships, let alone phase ships.

Honestly, skills in the current version make the Doom even more OP than it ever was against fighters and carriers. As if "press F to delete all fighters now" wasn't bad enough, there are now skills with significant boost to phase ships, where as carriers not only rely on their skills to function (where as phase ships are still usable and deadly without them), but their boosts are somewhat weak compared to those of phase ships.

You might as well not even field any carriers now if there's a Doom in the opposing fleet, unless you're minmaxed against it.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Megas on October 06, 2021, 06:24:11 AM
Honestly, skills in the current version make the Doom even more OP than it ever was against fighters and carriers. As if "press F to delete all fighters now" wasn't bad enough, there are now skills with significant boost to phase ships, where as carriers not only rely on their skills to function (where as phase ships are still usable and deadly without them), but their boosts are somewhat weak compared to those of phase ships.

You might as well not even field any carriers now if there's a Doom in the opposing fleet, unless you're minmaxed against it.
Without skills, player might as well not field any carriers against any serious late-game fight because the fighters will get mulched by the enemy fleet of whatever in about a minute.  Stuck at 30% rate might as well be out of ammo.  Expanded Deck Crew is mandatory, but with its weak bonuses, it alone is not enough to save unskilled fighters, and carriers get replaced by conventional warships or phase ships in my fleet.

As for Doom mining fighters, since fighters are effectively missiles and vice-versa, I have no problems with mines spawning directly on top of them for the instant kill.  As far as I am concerned, mines are effectively anti-missile for that use.

If I want "fighters" late in the game, I grab Conquest or cruiser with large missile mount and mount Locusts and Expanded Missile Racks (and try to get an officer with Missile Spec. if possible).  Does the much of the job fighters can do, except the Locusts last a few more minutes, and the "mothership" is still a fully-armed warship with ITU that can pound the enemy with gunfire, not a civilian freighter equivalent that spent all OP on fighters, Expanded Deck Crew, various hullmods, and few token flak or beam PD if any.  Even the modern Doom (especially with Systems Expertise) with mine spam and possibly some Salamanders plays more like the carriers did from before 0.8a than modern carriers.

Changing from fighters-as-ships to fighters-as-missiles has caused worse problems than those it fixed.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Wapno on October 09, 2021, 05:04:25 AM
As for Doom mining fighters, since fighters are effectively missiles and vice-versa, I have no problems with mines spawning directly on top of them for the instant kill.  As far as I am concerned, mines are effectively anti-missile for that use.
I think the whole mindset of "fighters = missiles" is heavily oversimplifying that aspect of the game, but regardless, I hold that Doom, or any ship for that matter, should not be a direct hard counter to all carriers like it is now.

Non-hybrid carriers nearly completely rely on their fighters for firepower, and mine spam shuts it down at pretty much zero cost to Doom, rendering the carriers useless (especially at 30% replacement rate). Notice that there isn't any other interaction like that between ships within the entire game. Imagine if there was something that could easily and permanently shut down warships and their weapons.

Maybe the closest things currently in existence to that are the Harbinger (which can turn off a warship, but only for a fraction of a second), Ziggy (which is a unique end-game ship, and comes with its own host of issues), and Shade/Omen with their ion emitter (which gets stopped by shield and isn't permanent anyway).

Furthermore, besides carriers, there are no other ships so heavily affected by perfect PD (except maybe the gimmick ship Gryphon, which is still a fully capable warship with multiple ballistic mounts at the front).

The current situation is simple and totally binary. If I see carriers in enemy fleet: field my Doom and never worry about any bombers in the entire fight. If I see Doom in the enemy fleet: DO NOT field any of my carriers - they'll get shut down easily.

Doom represents a nearly perfect, nearly zero cost PD, therefore it's overpowered.

Changing from fighters-as-ships to fighters-as-missiles has caused worse problems than those it fixed.
I disagree. Before the fighters-as-weapons change, there was practically zero point to piloting carriers, which were nothing but anemic watered-down warships acting as a repair point for drones which you don't even have any direct control over. I can say with 100% certainty that back then I never even bothered with carriers or fighters. They were just boring.

IIRC according to one of Alex's old blog posts, the change was supposed to give player a fun interaction with fighters and incentivize piloting carriers, which in my opinion it achieved without a doubt. I can't argue with you that the solution isn't without issues, but there is no legitimate reason to claim that it is worse than the previous system, which frankly was just horrible.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Megas on October 09, 2021, 06:31:43 AM
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I disagree. Before the fighters-as-weapons change, there was practically zero point to piloting carriers, which were nothing but anemic watered-down warships acting as a repair point for drones which you don't even have any direct control over. I can say with 100% certainty that back then I never even bothered with carriers or fighters. They were just boring.
Carriers were fine until 0.7a, when officers were added, then warships with skilled officers were so much stronger than fighters that carriers had no point.  Fighters could be commanded like ships, and even deployed without any carriers on the field.

Now, in 0.95, we are back to where we were in 0.7a in terms of carrier and fighter power, with some carrier skills in Leadership, and those in other trees that directly compete with other more useful general skills.  It is quite possible player cannot get carrier skills without sacrificing more important skills, and unskilled fighters this release are about as weak in 0.7a, with an inferior carrier-and-fighters system.

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IIRC according to one of Alex's old blog posts, the change was supposed to give player a fun interaction with fighters and incentivize piloting carriers, which in my opinion it achieved without a doubt.
Alex failed miserably, except maybe the first 0.8a release with overpowered Talons cost 0 OP and with only Expanded Deck Crew (another post-0.8a abomination) sucking OP out of the carriers.  (Of course, that had double burst PD Sparks and killer 3x3 Warthogs too...)  Disappointing too, since the new system seemed very promising on paper, and the problems only became apparent after I played with the fighters that were not overpowered and/or (after the Talon nerf) after I sacrificed all weapons and sent strong fighters at enemies and noticed they were more effective than a carrier with guns and weaker fighters.  If I pilot a dedicated carrier today, all I can do is run away from everything, which is boring.  Piloting a carrier with enough guns to defend itself or bully smaller ships in a brawl is more fun that running away from everything, which along with superior fighter control are why I consider pre-0.8a carriers/fighters superior to what we have today.

The biggest problems with carrier-and-fighters since 0.8a are fighters and Expanded Deck Crew sucking all OP out of the carrier just to do its job (of using fighters), and fighters cannot be commanded.  Instead of carriers being watered down warships, they are now dedicated freighters that haul fighters instead of cargo or fuel.  I rather have watered-down warship with superior control of fighters instead of an unarmed or minimally armed freighter in combat with very limited control of fighters - so limited that fighters feel more like missiles than fighters (there is a reason why I stand by fighters are missiles).  The latter can be tolerated if fighters are strong, but today, fighters are almost Pilums v2.

As for Gryphon, with its stats, I consider it a carrier pretending to be a warship.  Before 0.95, I would consider it worse than a carrier in every way, always rushing to the front line to die when it should be avoiding enemies and lobbing missiles from long range.  Today, with carriers being bad, I am not sure which is worse.  At least Gryphon can kill things with its large missile.  Although now that we have Champion, Gryphon does not serve much of a purpose anymore.  Gryphon is too fragile to brawl with Hammers and other weapons, and if I want a homing missile platform, I rather bring Apogee instead of Gryphon.

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Non-hybrid carriers nearly completely rely on their fighters for firepower, and mine spam shuts it down at pretty much zero cost to Doom, rendering the carriers useless (especially at 30% replacement rate). Notice that there isn't any other interaction like that between ships within the entire game. Imagine if there was something that could easily and permanently shut down warships and their weapons.
This would have been less of a problem for carriers before 0.8a, when they could have enough OP to support a viable weapons package (and with much better control of their fighters).  They would be like Legion today (which barely has enough OP for few main guns plus ITU).  Heron back during 0.65 would have been super Wolf with fighters, probably close to modern Fury except with fighters instead of Plasma Burn.  (And Venture, back when it was good, would have been like a Mora/Vigilance hybrid.)  Of course, if full warship has a problem, a semi-warship carrier might have it too.

Before 0.8, fighters cost either Logistics or fleet slots instead of the carriers' OP.  Because of that, along with absence of Expanded Deck Crew, carriers had the OP to arm and defend themselves (or chase and bully ships smaller than them).
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Linnis on October 09, 2021, 10:45:29 AM
The fighter OP cost problem is a real mess right now. On things like astral the OP is really generous, but putting weapons on that large, expensive, fragile thing seems to be counter productive. But on ships like Heron a few fighters already takes up a majority of the OP and turns the heron into a dedicated carrier only ship which is a shame. The only ship that seems like it can carry and fight is the Legion due to being able to fight at extreme range with its fighters and guns. Cheaper fighters OP wise could really help with the current situation.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Megas on October 09, 2021, 11:24:59 AM
From 0.8 to 0.9.1, fighters were better missiles than missiles.  Now, Locusts and ECCM'ed MIRVs are (or act as) better fighters than fighters, and they are generally (but not always, in case of Gryphon and Atlas 2) carried by full-blown warships with enough OP and stats to use their guns.

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Cheaper fighters OP wise could really help with the current situation.
Only partly.  Expanded Deck Crew is another OP hog (kind of like Expanded Missile Racks for missile users), and a carrier that wants a viable weapons package also needs ITU (and wants Expanded Missile Racks too if mounting missiles).  Legion is lucky, it has the mounts and OP to do both viably.  Legion14 has the option for missiles instead of fighters.  The other dedicated carriers do not have the OP (or in Condor/Mora's case, lack of good mounts) to support guns after they spend all the OP they need for their fighters and deck.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Thaago on October 09, 2021, 11:49:56 AM
Treating fighters as missiles or vice versa sounds like a good way to not get good use out of either... they are entirely different weapon systems, with different strengths, weaknesses, and ability to be commanded from the tactical map.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Megas on October 09, 2021, 12:03:51 PM
Treating fighters as missiles or vice versa sounds like a good way to not get good use out of either... they are entirely different weapon systems, with different strengths, weaknesses, and ability to be commanded from the tactical map.
I treat them that way because of the way they preformed in battle, not the other way around.

With my skill selection (no Leadership, wants ECM and other skills instead of carrier buffs short of wraparound), there is no way I can buff carriers, beyond Expanded Deck Crew on all carriers.  I used fighters like in last release.  Before late-game, they were okay, not optimal but they were not totally useless.  Took too long to kill weak pirates.  Once I started fighting late-game enemies, fighters dropped like flies and carriers quickly became the weakest links.  I replaced the carriers with more warships and noticed better performance.  Then near the end when I started fighting Radiants semi-regularly, I went from more warships to more Dooms (since Ziggurat and Radiant are huge hangar queens, and I need backup ships to pilot after one fight).

P.S.  As for why carriers are weaker now than last release?  I think:
* Weaker Expanded Deck Crew.  (Only 40% of the stat boost from before.)
* Enemy fleets with superior officer power.  (More enemies with skills to resist damage, and player without specific skills and/or whack-a-mole mercs to even up officer power starts with 40% of DP pool instead of 50%-60%.)
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: SafariJohn on October 09, 2021, 04:47:22 PM
Fighters would be a lot more fun to command and less like missiles if they would just stay on the target/mission you gave them until recalled.

Want to dump missiles on a pesky frigate while your bombers are in the middle of a run? Can't do that. Targeting the frigate will *** your bombing run.
Want to have your fighters fly around harassing things while you attack a ship? Can't do that. Targeting the ship will bring all your fighters running.


Other thing that is really irritating is like Megas said: lose all your fighters and your carrier can't do anything for a long while. What kind of fun is that? It makes fighter carriers un-fun to fly because all it takes is your fighters meandering into the Talon/whatever escort swarm that AI fleets love to do and all your little botes are gone.

I wish fighters couldn't deathball - then they could get skill buffs and stuff without inevitably becoming the be-all end-all strat.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: JAL28 on October 09, 2021, 07:52:53 PM
(since Ziggurat and Radiant are huge hangar queens, and I need backup ships to pilot after one fight).

Wait, Radiant as Hangar Queen? No way man, Radiant is one of the most broken vanilla capitals to exist, and is literally the sole reason why anyone chooses Automated Ships skill(and evidently you chose it, because you cannot obtain Radiants or any automated ships otherwise). A Radiant with a good loadout can solo a lot of things, including:
Spoiler
- Onslaught
- Paragon
- Conquest
- Most, if not all cruisers
- Anything slow enough to be unable to avoid its frontal barrage(includes many destroyers too)
- Other Radiants(close battle though)
- Single Tesseract(can kill the main dorito and subsequent shards, but dies to aspect swarm generated)
[close]
It's a killing machine, an Onslaught that's capable of catching 50% of enemies in the game. Phase Skimmer and Omni shield means it can catch ships trying to flank it. It has insane hull stats and coupled with HA and HS, with its already busted flux/dam, it can literally take an entire warfleet's beating while it single-mindedly slaughters its target, while still being able to escape with minimal damage(Phase Skimmer). And even better, it costs nothing compared to other high-tech(40 sup/month? That's literally a steal for a remnant ship). Unless you're using one of the autoshit loadouts it often gets(severely reducing its combat prowess) it should definitely be a mainstay in any fleet going up against tough enemies. Really, the only thing it gets hardcountered by is phase ships, but most ships get hardcounted by those anyway.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Megas on October 10, 2021, 07:07:39 AM
Wait, Radiant as Hangar Queen? No way man, Radiant is one of the most broken vanilla capitals to exist, and is literally the sole reason why anyone chooses Automated Ships skill(and evidently you chose it, because you cannot obtain Radiants or any automated ships otherwise). A Radiant with a good loadout can solo a lot of things, including:
Radiant is a hangar queen because with only Reliability Engineering boosting its CR, Radiant with alpha core only has 45% max CR.  After one round of fighting, it is in yellow malfunction territory.  It takes few days to recover enough CR back out of malfunction levels, and I consider Efficiency Overhaul mandatory on Radiant just to get out of the yellow faster.  Same deal with Hyperion without bonus max CR.  Ziggurat takes hangar queening up to eleven (and it is not all that good for its cost without the same skills that make Doom overpowered).

In situations that involve multiple fights, it does not matter how overpowered a ship is if it is good only for one fight.  There is only one Ziggurat, and player can only support one Radiant (or two with skills I did not use).

The two reasons I chose Automated Ships:
* Special Modifications is permanent:  Unable to respec out of.
* Compulsive looting:  Gotta have all the ships, and Automated Ships is the only way to catch-em-all.

If Spec.Mods was not permanent, I probably would have respec'ed out of Automated Ships (after collecting all the ships) for Spec.Mods (because I want my flagship to be overpowered, and I cannot pilot Radiant).  Similarly, I avoided Leadership because I did not want to lock my skills into more officers.

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Fighters would be a lot more fun to command and less like missiles if they would just stay on the target/mission you gave them until recalled.

Want to dump missiles on a pesky frigate while your bombers are in the middle of a run? Can't do that. Targeting the frigate will *** your bombing run.
Want to have your fighters fly around harassing things while you attack a ship? Can't do that. Targeting the ship will bring all your fighters running.
Also, fighters used to capture points on the map, and fighters could be commanded to explore the map covered by fog-of-war and look for hidden enemies.  They cannot do any of that ever since 0.8a.  Also, fighters have an annoying leash because they are effectively missiles now (they used to have unlimited range, and carrier need not be deployed if rebuilding in mid-battle was not necessary), and we cannot have long-range combat in a game designed for gundams beating each other over their heads with glowing metal sticks.

The main reasons why I say Locusts and ECCM'ed MIRVs are better fighters than fighters is because they kill ships and (with Expanded Missile Racks), take more time to run out of ammo than it does for unskilled fighters to die en masse until they reach 30% and stay there for the rest of the fight.  Fighters have more in common with small missiles or Pilums than the large homing missiles.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Vanshilar on October 13, 2021, 05:27:50 PM
Nah Hyperion doesn't come close to a cruiser like Fury. Using a fleet of Doom (myself) as flagship, 5 Furies with cryoblaster/sabot/xyphos, and 5 Hyperions with cryoblaster/heavy blaster/heavy machine gun (non-SO, but elite Helmsmanship and I had wolfpack tactics), against my 2-Ordos testing fleet (including 7 Radiants), the Furies did way more than the Hyperions. The results ended up being:

Doom (me) did 39% of the damage and received 2% damage taken
5 Furies did 40% of the damage and received 71% damage taken
5 Hyperions did 21% of the damage and received 26% damage taken

Not only did the Furies do almost twice as much damage as the Hyperions, they also tanked the bulk of the incoming damage -- their flux did double duty. The Hyperions basically sniped and harassed but couldn't really stand up to much damage, so they had to back off under any kind of fire. (Of course, I myself piloting the Doom flagship didn't take much damage, but as least I did more damage. Then again, I could pilot a Shrike and still deal the most damage in the fleet; the player is simply much better at gauging risk vs opportunity than the AI.)

Hyperion is good for certain things, but not really cruiser-level in terms of effectiveness (even though I still maintain that they're basically a light cruiser that's deliberately "downsized" to a frigate to keep the power of TP in check).

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Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: RustyCabbage on October 13, 2021, 06:38:47 PM
Honestly, no Sabots and no SO makes it seem like you're not exactly setting up your Hyperions for success. I don't think it's surprising that the ship with up to 200-350 extra dissipation and 1-2 Sabot Pods has higher DPS than that Hyperion build.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: intrinsic_parity on October 13, 2021, 10:32:58 PM
Yeah Hyperion is hamstrung without SO, it's like 60% weaker. Not to mention that fury is pretty clearly overpowered on this patch and not a fair representation of cruisers. It should be worth at least 22 DP IMO, on par with an eagle.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Vanshilar on October 14, 2021, 02:11:56 AM
Sure, go ahead and suggest your own SO Hyperion loadout then (including officer skills). I was just going by what I saw in the screenshot (I thought it was heavy blaster/HMG/cryoblaster, turns out it was cryoflamer not cryoblaster). Even using SO Hyperions (cryoblaster/cryoflamer/sabot), their damage percentage increases somewhat but still behind on the Furies:

Doom (me) did 36% of the damage and took 3% of the incoming damage
5 Furies did 37% of the damage and took 66% of the incoming damage
5 Hyperions did 25% of the damage and took 31% of the incoming damage

(One Hyperion died toward the end, while trying to teleport in the middle of a tachyon burst even though it was at low flux, but I didn't feel like re-running it; at that point it wouldn't have mattered that much anyway.)

The Furies still did a lot more than the Hyperions. From Alex's comments it seems like the Furies will be bumped up to 20 DP, so they can be counted as 33% more expensive than Hyperions (in fact I've already adjusted their DP to 20 in ships_data.csv to play that way), but they did about 50% more damage. They also tanked more than double of the damage. Plus, these Furies use Xyphos, so they are also providing PD and incapacitating enemy ships, whereas the Hyperions are pure damage. Since that's very expensive, I actually put 0 vents into the Furies, so the non-SO Hyperions actually had more vent (800 vs 720). Even so, the Furies still contributed more.

The Hyperions ended up with around 35% CR post-battle, meaning they ended the fight with around 75% CR. Although the fight would've taken much longer had I and the Furies not been there, i.e. if it were pure Hyperions. But even taking 35% CR post-battle, this means they would take around 8 days to repair, costing around 32.5 supplies each. Whereas the Furies would be back to full after 3 days, costing around 16.5 supplies each. So each Hyperion costs about double the supplies to use. Not to mention, on a pure damage basis you'd need 3 Hyperions for 2 Furies, so they're really about 3x the supplies. Then you have to consider the tanking and the fleet PD/incapacitation roles that the Furies are also providing, which are what enables the fleet to do its damage in the first place. So pretty soon the Hyperions aren't really worth it. They're good versus smaller, easier fleets, but not big ones. Or maybe have a couple to grab waypoints early and help harass the enemy fleet, but then that's about it.

There *are* a number of ships which can actually beat the Furies in contributing more damage on a per-DP basis (especially when the Fury is considered as 20 DP), though I don't use them as the backbone of the fleet for a variety of reasons. The Odyssey for example will do more damage and tank more damage, even when accounting for its 45 DP to the Fury's (future) 20 DP. (Surprisingly, I found that HIL/cryoblaster does better than plasma cannons, although the latter should mean more DPS.) But fielding multiple Odysseys means not enough ships means they get surrounded, so best to use 1 or 2. The Onslaught can also pull its weight. The Doom (when piloted by the AI) usually does enough damage to pull its weight, but its greatest asset is as a distraction to prevent the enemy fleet from getting too concentrated, similar to my role as the Doom flagship. The Apogee can also do surprisingly well in terms of damage (although again HIL does better than plasma cannon for whatever reason), but it's too slow to chase down frigates. And of course whichever ship the player is piloting, assuming an at least minimally competent player.

So it's not as if the Fury is uniquely overpowered. However, the Fury is useful (for me, anyway) as a yardstick to measure ship effectiveness in late-game i.e. vs Ordos fleets. And in this case the Hyperion doesn't hold up, even with SO.

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Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: intrinsic_parity on October 14, 2021, 09:26:51 AM
I don't think raw damage dealt and damage taken statistics are really a good representation of effectiveness for a number of reasons:

If you kill things faster, you will sometimes deal less damage and take less damage than if you are part of an extended brawl involving multiple vent cycles (this happens to slow capital ships a lot). Some ships really build up damage number without actually killing things quickly. The end goal is to kill things, not to maximize damage dealt.

If you bypass/avoid shields in any way, you will deal less total damage. Hyperion TP can do this, smaller phase ships and some fast frigates can also do this to some extent.

If you are small and fast, the enemy will miss you a lot and you will take less damage, but you are still occupying all the damage output that is fired at you. On the flip side, if you have a massive shield (i.e. odyssey), you will eat a ton of damage that you don't actually want to. You would rather that damage miss you so that you have more flux capacity for damage output. Tanking damage on shields is actually undesirable, you would much rather occupy the damage potential by dodging, or even simply staying out of weapon arcs entirely, but it's difficult to represent that statistically.

If you cause an enemy to not shoot (say in order to turn around to face you, or to chase you away from he battle) you are also occupying their damage potential without tanking any damage or possibly not even dealing any more damage. That's still valuable, but it's not entirely clear how to measure that value. This is why small ships tend to outperform pure capitals, they can spread out and occupy enemy aggression.

Ion damage/knocking weapons offline will decrease the amount of damage you take, which is good. Another way to occupy damage potential without actually tanking damage.

Basically I think just saying 'this ships tanks and deals more damage' is not necessarily a helpful analysis of effectiveness.

I'm not even saying hyperion is better, just that the analysis isn't all that insightful. Fury and doom are almost certainly better on this patch, because they are unbalanced (as thoroughly discussed elsewhere on the forum).

Also for what it's worth, I don't really care too much about optimizing against ordos, I get bored way before that point. The optimal strat is probably to solo everything in a doom or chain afflictors, but I find that tedious and uninteresting.

My Hyperion loadout is usually cryoblaster/HB  + HB + ion pulser, with SO, hardened subsystems, hardened shields, extended shields and efficiency overhaul but hmg might be better for remnants. The officer would be agressive and have shield modulation, the CR skill, target analysis, systems expertise and energy weapon modulation (elite). I haven't spent any time optimizing it specifically for remnants because I don't care about that in particular, so I'm not claiming it's the best, but it does work for me.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Thaago on October 14, 2021, 09:32:42 AM
I agree that damage taken isn't a good metric for ship performance, and lower is usually better instead of the reverse.

For damage, I agree that for shield damage comparison is difficult, but hull damage dealt should be pretty reliable as it doesn't regenerate and isn't locational like armor (by which I mean that you can imagine an innefficient ship stripping a whole ship of armor and racking up big numbers while an efficient ship just punches through in 1 spot). Not to say that hull damage is end all be all - after all, something needs to get the enemy shield and armor down! - but it is an accurate measure of whats getting kills.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Megas on October 14, 2021, 12:15:47 PM
Also for what it's worth, I don't really care too much about optimizing against ordos, I get bored way before that point. The optimal strat is probably to solo everything in a doom or chain afflictors, but I find that tedious and uninteresting.
In 0.95, OwR (Ordos with Radiants) are a huge spike of difficulty over even 300k+ bounties or equivalent that anything that can handle OwR will totally destroy anything in the core worlds.  Even fleets that can steamroll human NPC fleets flawlessly and reliably can struggle against OwR.  Thus, if player wants to farm OwR, having a fleet that can crush them is useful.  With my fleet and skill selection (I had Combat, Tech, and Industry at 5/5/5), I could only do it by chaining Dooms.  (Without Spec. Mods., Doom flagship was not overpowered enough to murder OwR as cleanly and efficiently as SCC did.)
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: intrinsic_parity on October 14, 2021, 02:49:16 PM
Also for what it's worth, I don't really care too much about optimizing against ordos, I get bored way before that point. The optimal strat is probably to solo everything in a doom or chain afflictors, but I find that tedious and uninteresting.
In 0.95, OwR (Ordos with Radiants) are a huge spike of difficulty over even 300k+ bounties or equivalent that anything that can handle OwR will totally destroy anything in the core worlds.  Even fleets that can steamroll human NPC fleets flawlessly and reliably can struggle against OwR.  Thus, if player wants to farm OwR, having a fleet that can crush them is useful.  With my fleet and skill selection (I had Combat, Tech, and Industry at 5/5/5), I could only do it by chaining Dooms.  (Without Spec. Mods., Doom flagship was not overpowered enough to murder OwR as cleanly and efficiently as SCC did.)
Sure, but there is a difference between hyper-optimizing against them to maximize story point gain vs. finding something that works well enough to farm some AI cores. I was able to beat them cleanly 1 or 2 at a time, and didn't feel the need to optimize any further. Hyperion was good enough to be in that fleet. That's all I'm saying.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: robepriority on October 14, 2021, 03:28:52 PM
Ziggurat for station busting? That's a role?

I thought it was for countering omega weapon burst.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Megas on October 14, 2021, 04:15:12 PM
Sure, but there is a difference between hyper-optimizing against them to maximize story point gain vs. finding something that works well enough to farm some AI cores. I was able to beat them cleanly 1 or 2 at a time, and didn't feel the need to optimize any further. Hyperion was good enough to be in that fleet. That's all I'm saying.
I tried the same myself (of comfortably killing Ordos with Radiants for cores), but without complete success.  Radiant and phase fleet did not work well enough against strong Ordos if I deployed them as a fleet.  Best case, my fleet kills one Ordos (out of several nearby), but then Radiant and Ziggurat are in the red or yellow and I need to wait days to get out of the yellow, and I have only my fleet of Dooms left for the next several Ordos breathing down my fleet's neck.  Worst case, too many ships die (because enemy Radiants are overpowered and AI cannot cheese with phase ships like player can).  With the Doom fleet, I resorted to a chain of Doom flagships fighting solo to minimize costs and casualties (similar to killing classic Hegemony System Defense Fleet with 25 DP worth of chained frigate flagships in 0.6 releases for no Leadership builds.)

I cannot try +500% cheese fleets when I have Industry 5.  Industry is the campaign QoL tree, not max power combat tree.  Industry 5 meant no Leadership 5 or Technology 10.  With Combat 5 and Technology 10, I could solo fleets like SCC could.  Or with Combat/Leadership/Tech 5/5/5, I could attempt Hyperion or Fury spam.

Also, I bring about five Phantoms to drive-by raid targets of opportunity for free stuff.  That would probably mess up bonus xp and some skills.

Ziggurat for station busting? That's a role?
Is Ziggurat any good against stations?  When I try to send motes to a station module, it almost always targets its center (instead of the module I tried to target) instead and the motes get wasted.  Makes it too hard to zap modules and Ziggurat is almost a sitting duck against the battlestation.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Megas on October 15, 2021, 05:45:35 AM
Sure, but there is a difference between hyper-optimizing against them to maximize story point gain vs. finding something that works well enough to farm some AI cores. I was able to beat them cleanly 1 or 2 at a time, and didn't feel the need to optimize any further. Hyperion was good enough to be in that fleet. That's all I'm saying.
One more thing.  I tried a fleet similar to what I used in 0.9.1, with capitals and carriers (and mostly capital spam), but they got wiped.  They could kill human fleets without much problem, but hit a wall as soon as they met top Ordos fleets (unlike in 0.9.1).  Ordos with Radiants are such a huge spike compared to 0.9.1.

If I want to farm cores, the only fleet that matters is one that can kill Ordos fleets without losing too many ships, and a fleet that can do that will destroy everything else the game throws at the player.  I am not even trying to optimize for +500%, just one that can get those shiny alpha cores so I can attempt full sector conquest if I want to do that.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Vanshilar on October 16, 2021, 01:25:29 AM
I don't think raw damage dealt and damage taken statistics are really a good representation of effectiveness for a number of reasons:

Damage dealt

Eh since this is a combat game, I'm not sure why you would feel that damage dealt/taken are not a good representation of a ship's effectiveness. That's basically the point of combat, kill the enemy before they kill you, and damage is how the kills are made. Granted there are other roles a ship might have (for example, as I mentioned, the Fury having Xyphos is also providing PD, anti-fighter, and incapacitation abilities, which aren't directly represented in combat statistics), but the Hyperion isn't really doing any of them here.

If a ship is spending its time doing vent cycles in a brawl, it may end up doing more damage per ship killed (because it does more shield/armor damage), but it's not going to be doing more damage per unit time than another ship that's smashing through the enemy fleet -- that is, the rate of doing damage, which is effectively what the combat statistics measure. This is why I'm doing a direct comparison of the Fury and the Hyperion in the same battle -- they're effectively competing against each other for who can do damage the fastest. If a ship is at an effective stalemate with another ship, firing some shots, then backing off to vent, repeat, etc., then it's spending time at high (hard) flux and not firing until it backs off far enough away that it can vent, then coming back to go again. That's very inefficient on time, on a damage per second basis per cycle. Another ship that can go in and kill its target will be able to move on to another target and keep firing. So killing things faster leads to more damage dealt, not less.

Now if I used a fleet full of ship A against the test fleet, and then used a fleet full of ship B against the same test fleet, and we look at the topline number ("X total damage delivered"), then you'd be right -- in that case, any damage beyond what was needed to kill the test fleet is basically inefficient (since the test fleet has the same amount of hull in both cases), and the lower that topline number, the better. But that's not how the setup is done here.

Yes the way to actually "kill" a ship is via its hull; you can bypass shields (which is why I prefer to pilot the Doom), and you can minimize hitting armor if you keep striking at the same spot (to keep hitting hull so you're not wasting your shots on armor). However, on a hull damage basis, the Hyperion was even worse; the Furies did 118,393 hull damage, while the Hyperions did 69,325 hull damage, so the Furies actually did 71% more hull damage than the Hyperions. 33% of the Furies' damage went toward enemy hull, whereas 28% of the Hyperions' damage did, so the Hyperions were actually less efficient at killing than the Furies. Looking at the overall damage rather than hull damage actually inflated the Hyperions' damage results.

Since you used cryoblaster/heavy blaster/ion pulser, I tried that instead (SO, extended/hardened/solar/stabilized shields, hardened subsystems, reckless officer with TA, SE, RE, SM, elite EWM). In theory it should do more hull damage than the Fury because the Fury is using cryoblaster, 2 sabot pods, minipulser, IR pulse laser, and Xyphos, so the only thing that is anti-hull is the cryoblaster, whereas the Hyperion also has heavy blaster. However, the results were still that the Fury did 50% more hull damage than the Hyperion (117,597 to 78,230), as well as 51% more overall damage (334,366 to 222,152). So the Hyperion improved, but not much.

Damage absorbed

Regarding damage absorbed, it's essentially a proxy for measuring how well a ship can tank and its combat persistence, i.e. ability to hold territory before it needs to back off. Granted a smaller ship can maneuver tank or kite where the potential damage wouldn't be recorded, but in this case the Fury is using Xyphos which directly disables enemy weapons -- and that's not recorded either. But it leads to an observation about how the two ships fight: The Hyperion tends to teleport in, shoot its load, and then teleport out at the first sign of trouble. By contrast, the Fury stays in and actually finishes the fight while absorbing hits to its shield. In doing so, the Fury actually makes use of the opening where a ship is vulnerable to make sure the ship doesn't get away. The Hyperion usually teleports away even at low flux (i.e. when it isn't in any danger), which is an AI issue rather than a fundamental ship issue, but we all have to deal with the game's AI unless we're soloing. Hence, the Fury spends more of its time actually doing damage, thus the higher damage numbers, while the Hyperion more often lets the target get away, allowing the target to regen its flux in safety.

Which leads to another issue. The Fury absorbed hits primarily to its shield. The Hyperion tended to teleport in the middle of being attacked, which means its shields temporarily dropped and it took damage during the teleportation sequence. Thus in the previous fight, the Furies combined took a total of 2787 armor damage and 330 hull damage, while the Hyperions took a total of 3033 armor damage and 2852 hull damage (including the one which died who took 1442 hull damage). In the attached fight, the Furies took 932 armor damage and 188 hull damage, while the Hyperions took 1811 armor damage and 448 hull damage. So the Furies absorbed damage using its flux, which regenerates, while the Hyperions took relatively more damage to armor and hull, which is permanent. That's bad.

2-Ordos test fleets as benchmark

You can use whatever test you want to compare ships, but generally speaking benchmarks for comparisons are done using a fairly difficult problem. Nobody cares about how fast the latest CPU opens notepad.exe for example, it's simply too trivial a task to act as a good differentiator between different CPU's.

Ordos fleets are high-end and thus fleets that can defeat them effectively can also generally defeat any other fleet, excepting certain unique fights (whose results wouldn't apply toward fighting other fleets anyway, due to their unique mechanics). Thus they work well as a way to differentiate between good loadouts and bad loadouts, good fleet compositions and bad fleet compositions, etc. It's easy for a fleet that can defeat a high-end fleet to "punch down" to something easier, but more difficult to tell if a fleet that can defeat a low-end fleet can "punch up" to something more difficult. Hence the results are relevant even when fighting easier fleets such as faction fleets, even if a player doesn't bother farming Ordos fleets.

Nor did I ever bother to actually optimize the Fury loadout. There are simply too many possibilities to try. Sure I think I've settled on Fury/Xyphos/sabot, but is it actually best to put all remaining 14 points into capacity (which is what I did) as opposed to putting some into vent? I don't know. I took front shields, is it actually better to just keep the original omni shields so I can put the points toward something else (or, freeing up the OP needed to have one less s-mod so I can take Automated Ships for a Radiant)? I don't know. So there's not even any guarantees that the Fury loadout is the best it could possibly have been either.

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Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: intrinsic_parity on October 16, 2021, 12:03:56 PM
I should say, raw damage statistics are nowhere near a complete picture of effectiveness. They are not useless, but do not give the whole picture. I'm merely trying to point out the ways that those numbers can fail to reflect underlying effectiveness, or ways they can overrepresent certain aspects of ships that aren't necessarily that valuable.

Granted there are other roles a ship might have...but the Hyperion isn't really doing any of them here.
I would argue hyperion has a ton of value purely in it's tendency to end up behind the enemy and not die while doing that, causing them to turn around and expose their vulnerable engines to the rest of the fleet. It also causes enemy ships to spend lots of time pointing in useless directions (not shooting or shooting ineffectively) as they try to turn and chase it. Even if it did no damage, it would be worth quite a bit IMO. For me, that's half the value of the (AI) hyperion. IMO, hyperion does not need to do as much damage/DP as other ships to be worthwhile. I also value its ability to instantly capture control points on the enemy side of the battlefield giving extra DP at the start of battles (very significant against remnants), and it's ability to efficiently hunt and kill small ships that would otherwise be a major distraction for the rest of the fleet. Usually my hyperion kills 2-3 frigates before any of my other ships have fired a shot, although perhaps only 1-2 remnant frigates. That leaves my core ships (like furies) free to deal damage to the big slow ships without worrying about flanks or getting distracted.

Edit: my Hyperion also has an ion pulser to match the zyphos ion damage for whatever that is worth.

r.e. dmg/sec
It doesn't matter at all unless CR/PPT is a major factor costing you supplies. A strategy that kills everything in 20 seconds is not worse than a strategy that kills everything in 10 seconds.

The fastest you can kill something is to overload it once, break the armor in one location, and chew through all the hull. That's the minimum damage you can do while winning. Any additional damage you do beyond that is wasted/inefficient. Of course you will never achieve that, but you also shouldn't laude that wasted damage as somehow representing increased effectiveness. It didn't achieve anything, it was an inefficiency.

Since you used cryoblaster/heavy blaster/ion pulser, I tried that instead (SO, extended/hardened/solar/stabilized shields, hardened subsystems, reckless officer with TA, SE, RE, SM, elite EWM). In theory it should do more hull damage than the Fury because the Fury is using cryoblaster, 2 sabot pods, minipulser, IR pulse laser, and Xyphos, so the only thing that is anti-hull is the cryoblaster, whereas the Hyperion also has heavy blaster. However, the results were still that the Fury did 50% more hull damage than the Hyperion (117,597 to 78,230), as well as 51% more overall damage (334,366 to 222,152). So the Hyperion improved, but not much.
Your fury is very heavy on efficient/anti-shield damage (double sabot, minipulser, ir pulse lasers), so it is not surprising at all that it is more effective against remnants that heavily incentivize shield damage with their super efficient shields. Also, in my previous comments, I clearly agreed with you that fury is better because it is currently overpowered. In fact, if you adjust the fury to 22 DP like I suggested, the hull damage/DP is almost identical to the hyperion in your test LOL. Not to mention all the other value the hyperion has that I mentioned earlier.


r.e. damage taken
Once again, I'm not trying to prove that hyperions are superior, just trying to point out the ways that the numbers you are citing don't actually fully represent the effectiveness of ships. I think if you could somehow add up all the damage that was either fired at the hyperion and missed, or not fired at all because the ship was distracted by the hyperion, it would be a very large number, perhaps larger than the furies total damage tanked.

I agree that the AI's tendency to take unnecessary hull/armor damage with hyperion is a significant downside.


r.e. the 2-Ordos test fleets as benchmark
I don't think a computer benchmark test is a fair comparison. At the end of the day, every computational task boils down to a bunch of basic operations/computations that need to be executed, and processors are measured by the number of computations per second they can do. On the other hand, different fights in starsector reward different types of damage, and different strategies unequally, so being able to deal damage quickly/efficiently in one fight doesn't necessarily translate perfectly to another.

Remnants heavily reward anti-shield capabilities, and also radiants in particular tend to punish frigates pretty hard with their ability to instantly turn and chase with TP. Both of these things are in favor of the fury in this fight, but not necessarily in other fights. In another end-game type fight like a 10x legion/onslaught bounty, anti-armor damage and flanking are potentially more valuable. Of course furies will do fine in those fights, but perhaps they will be less efficient per supply. Every fight is a different fight that you could optimize for.

IMO, any strategy that can beat all of the challenges in the game is pretty much indistinguishable from the others. Even differences in supply cost or money are pretty much irrelevant by the end of the game.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Maethendias on November 28, 2021, 04:39:45 PM
tier lists about capitals especially do not make sense, since all capital ships are hyper specialized, and VERY seldom share a similar role, take frontline brawling for example:

people would think "hey paragon is tanky, thats a good frontline for my fleet, an ANCHOR", but it isnt. despite the paragon being able to eat alot of fire thanks to its shields, it doesnt actually want to do that... it also dies very quickly when fighting multiple foes at once... no the paragon is actually a sniper, an artillery plattform best utilized against capital heavy fleets or stations (and even then dont pull an icarus) meanwhile, the acutal tank of the capital arsenal, the onslaught, REALLY doesnt want to fight the range game...  instead it is very happy going brawling as your frontline and 1 v 1 ing targets up close and personal.

the same thing happens for the carriers, astral is a pure hangar plattform, and everything usefull about it has been thrown out to make it as good of a hangar plattform as it could possibly be.. then you list the legion. the legion is not a mainstay carrier, the legion is a command ship. VERY durable, VERY manouverable and more importantly, its a generalist in the purest sense... and yes, it DOESNT want to use bombers, because its not a ship to be using bombers on... its an anchor... and the job of a fleet anchor is to bind the majority of the enemies attention to itself while being durable and flexible enough to deal with most situations. this means, shield damage, escort ships, and interceptors. you said it yourself, its fighters take alot of losses by virtue of the legion always going "in".... thats why you use fighters that have a very short replacement time (xyphon fighters are amazing here btw, in addition to all other positives, especially concerning the role of the legion, they give you a "semi" shield when you vent with your legion... making it indirectly even tankier) the legion is not a carrier, its a battle carrier

conquest and oddissey are the only exceptions in the capital roster, and even then the conquest is more of a brawler and the oddissey is more of a sniper thanks to the diffrences in ballistics to energy weapons and hardpoint coverage overall.

ironically, while you were praising the backline appeal of the astral, kind of forgotten that about the atlas 2... yes i agree, it can be a very effective weapon, but imo it isnt a capital, more of an oversized cruiser.. indeed a very strong missile plattform... for aformentioned reasons it doesnt acutally want to USE its ballistics for anything but pd... trust me, fighters and missiles are its DEATH... it is a PURE missile plattform, however, it fills this role exceptionally well (arguably better than the gryphon), slot in some missile racks, give it a missile spec officer, and just watch it spam 2 large missile slots like no ones business. VERY potent if you build around it.

i also dont think remnants as a whole or story exclusive ships should appear in any tierlist anyways... especially remnants who are purposefully overtuned


so ye... tier lists kind of dont make sense for capital ships, there are too few of them, and they all serve completly diffrent purposes



2 notes on the side, the aurora is a SO ship, slot projectile energy weapons into it, and use it as a cruiser sized wolf (same with shrikes btw), both can also make exceptional use of mining blasters (i recommend a mix of a few ion cannons, lots of pulse lasers and mining blasters /lances in this order, again, SO is key for these ships)

also, omen, its not a point defence ship by any  means, despite it being able to shoot down fighters and missiles, its acutally a flanking ship disabler. if it gets its hands on a ship without shields its system can quickly fry all its systems and weapons, leaving it helpless... does also considerable armor damage to light-midsized targets, and is quite the shield tanker
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Amazigh on November 28, 2021, 06:21:16 PM
the conquest is more of a brawler and the oddissey is more of a sniper

I'm sorry but what.

Conquest is a sniper, with 2x Gauss and 2x Hurricane you can outrange near enough everything, and have the speed to keep your distance.
It has atrocious shields, and is very squishy once the shield goes down, so brawling is not a good idea at all.

Odyssey is a flanker, with 2x Plasma, 3x Sabot Pod and Hurricane you have monstrous close range damage, and mobility on par with some cruisers, allowing you to flank around and annihilate more or less anything smaller than you very quickly.
While beams have long range and Advanced Optics to boost that even further, they are not a good option for sniper builds, as soft flux damage means they are only really useful when massed to ridiculous levels or when used against ships much smaller than you.

Even if you got the names the wrong way around, the Odyssey can't really work as a brawler. Its shield is only moderately efficient and it has paper thin armour, so it dies very quickly in close range frontal engagements against similarly sized vessels.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Megas on November 28, 2021, 07:48:02 PM
Both Conquest and Odyssey can be built to brawl.  Odyssey with two plasma cannons can outgun just about anything in a duel.  They both need either Hardened Shields or maximum caps to shield tank adequately.  Conquest also needs appropriate AI (Steady for 800-900 range weapons, Aggressive for Storm Needlers) if not piloted by player.  Odyssey with double plasma does not work well with AI and needs player control.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Maethendias on November 29, 2021, 12:50:41 AM
the conquest is more of a brawler and the oddissey is more of a sniper

I'm sorry but what.

Conquest is a sniper, with 2x Gauss and 2x Hurricane you can outrange near enough everything, and have the speed to keep your distance.
It has atrocious shields, and is very squishy once the shield goes down, so brawling is not a good idea at all.

Odyssey is a flanker, with 2x Plasma, 3x Sabot Pod and Hurricane you have monstrous close range damage, and mobility on par with some cruisers, allowing you to flank around and annihilate more or less anything smaller than you very quickly.
While beams have long range and Advanced Optics to boost that even further, they are not a good option for sniper builds, as soft flux damage means they are only really useful when massed to ridiculous levels or when used against ships much smaller than you.

Even if you got the names the wrong way around, the Odyssey can't really work as a brawler. Its shield is only moderately efficient and it has paper thin armour, so it dies very quickly in close range frontal engagements against similarly sized vessels.


despitebeing able to do that.... uhm, gauss cannons on their own arent acutally that usefull..., and neither are long rage hurricanes.. thats what i mean, long range ballistics usually isnt a good idea, ye the shield damage is there, but there is a lack of follow through, ships can easily just vent through gauss cannons and tank 1 or 2 hits... with a conquest you are alot better off skirmishing mid range with dps ballistics... because THEN hurricanes acutally dont miss anymore, like as many issues the ai has... you cant just throw hurricanes from across the sector at it and expect results

again, coming back to the odyssey, you dont want it to acutally get too close to enemies... you want to skirmish with it to a position where it can use tachyons as a flanker or from the back of the enemy.... you know, when beams acutally become usefull? since most ships dont have omni shields

you can make ANYTHING work in starsector, thats not the point... my point was, capitals were mainly built to fill a specific role, instead of all being just "flag ships"
ALSO, like i said.... conquest and odyssey blur the line anyways... so i dont understand why you are making that point again
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Amazigh on November 29, 2021, 06:25:04 PM
despitebeing able to do that.... uhm, gauss cannons on their own arent acutally that usefull..., and neither are long rage hurricanes..
If you were just deploying the conquest solo then sure, enemies can just vent away the worst of the flux, but you deploy it as part of a fleet where the long range kinetic pressure lets other ships do work.
And personally i've found hurricanes (with or without ECCM) to be sufficiently accurate enough at gauss range to be worth using.

In general re: my suggested conquest build, it's what i've found to be a build that is super AI-friendly, which is generally what you want to go for with capitals, as they are typically less fun to pilot personally than smaller ships.
Any closer range build for the conquest requires specific officer personalities to avoid having the ship *** up and die, because it has bad armour and bad shields.

They both need either Hardened Shields or maximum caps to shield tank adequately.
I'd say by doing this you're to quote to phrase: "Polishing a turd"
Conquest in particular, as the shields on it are so bad that even with HS (which is gonna be nerfed in 0.95a1 making this strat even less viable) its shield is inefficient enough to not really be something you want to "tank" with imo.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Megas on November 29, 2021, 07:28:17 PM
I'd say by doing this you're to quote to phrase: "Polishing a turd"
Conquest in particular, as the shields on it are so bad that even with HS (which is gonna be nerfed in 0.95a1 making this strat even less viable) its shield is inefficient enough to not really be something you want to "tank" with imo.
No, it is "making its defense good enough so that it wins the flux war instead of losing it" and/or "turning it from a battlecruiser to a fast battleship" by being able to absorb some hits while it blows the crap out of the enemy with overwhelming firepower.  Basically, outgun the enemy first, and Conquest has the flux stats to do it, even with mediocre shields.

Yes, Hardened Shields will be weakened, though it will be cheaper so player can put the remaining OP into caps.  Of course, it will probably be a net loss.  +30 caps can do the job of Hardened Shields, although it is not as good because it effectively slows venting.  Still, 30 caps is the only option if player has not found Hardened Shields before obtaining Conquest, and it gets the job done.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: intrinsic_parity on November 29, 2021, 11:17:58 PM
Gauss cannons are actually quite decent against hull armor. 700 damage kinetic hits means 350 hit strength for armor calcs making it slightly worse than a mauler. Not super efficient but it will do good damage. The AI is good at sniping though so it's more of a player build.

I would also the odyssey is quite bad at sniping. The only reasonable long range option it has is the tac lance, but it has no ability to deal hard flux damage to set those up. 2x plasma odyssey (or plasma + auto pulse for the AI) is much much better than tac lance odyssey IMO.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Igncom1 on November 30, 2021, 01:49:51 AM
I always go for a duel autopulse, or autopulse and t lance for my odysseys. But I mostly rely on the AI.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: TaLaR on November 30, 2021, 02:36:44 AM
They both need either Hardened Shields or maximum caps to shield tank adequately.
I'd say by doing this you're to quote to phrase: "Polishing a turd"
Conquest in particular, as the shields on it are so bad that even with HS (which is gonna be nerfed in 0.95a1 making this strat even less viable) its shield is inefficient enough to not really be something you want to "tank" with imo.

It's not like Conquest can armor-tank. Base armor seems decent, but gun layout makes you vulnerable anyway (unlike Onslaught which has most guns too deep within the ship to disable).

You are at least withing TL/HIL and enemy Gauss range while using Gauss, so you have to be able to tank that (at least no worse than the enemy Conquest in Gauss case).

Plus you'd want to approach closer to use Heavy Maulers as well after enemy is already at high flux.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: JUDGE! slowpersun on November 30, 2021, 02:44:20 AM
you can make ANYTHING work in starsector, thats not the point... my point was, capitals were mainly built to fill a specific role, instead of all being just "flag ships"

Save you "flag ship" for super-capital class...!
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Vanshilar on December 22, 2021, 06:40:49 AM
I should say, raw damage statistics are nowhere near a complete picture of effectiveness. They are not useless, but do not give the whole picture. I'm merely trying to point out the ways that those numbers can fail to reflect underlying effectiveness, or ways they can overrepresent certain aspects of ships that aren't necessarily that valuable.

Damage numbers aren't necessarily the only thing you need to know, but they're probably one of if not the most important measures of a ship's effectiveness. After all, the purpose of a fight is to reduce every enemy ship's hull to 0, and the way to do that is by doing damage. They're basically a primary metric of a ship's effectiveness.

I would argue hyperion has a ton of value purely in it's tendency to end up behind the enemy and not die while doing that, causing them to turn around and expose their vulnerable engines to the rest of the fleet.

Going behind battle lines is actually a terrible thing for the AI to do, since you're opening up new battle lines and taking damage in a situation where (by definition) the enemy wouldn't be shooting anyway, and you're diluting your own forces to do so. Now it's great for the Hyperion to help draw off some enemy forces to help your fleet concentrate its firepower on fewer remaining ships, but that's something that can be done by other frigates, and 15 DP for each Hyperion is a lot to dedicate toward that (since you're looking at the ratio between the DP of the ship that you're using to draw enemy ships away, and the DP of those enemy ships). Every DP that goes toward splitting up the enemy fleet means less DP toward actually killing the enemy fleet. So this points to having maybe 1-3 such ships, and keeping their total DP low, otherwise your fleet starts losing too much firepower for the splitting up to be worthwhile. The fact that the Hyperion is such an expensive ship at 15 DP means that it has to distract a lot more enemy ships than other frigates doing the same task to be worthwhile. It doesn't mean the Hyperion isn't useful, but it means it's very expensive for its task, and not something worth building your fleet around. Basically support, like having a few cargo ships, although in this case Hyperion(s) would be support in combat rather than campaign.

Additionally, this means it's very expensive to dedicate skill points toward frigate-boosting skills such as Wolfpack Tactics on a high-end fleet, when there are many other skills which help boost the whole fleet or your personal flagship instead. Furthermore, having Hyperions rely on SO means you're going to be burning through CR and thus a lot of supplies for this.

r.e. dmg/sec
It doesn't matter at all unless CR/PPT is a major factor costing you supplies. A strategy that kills everything in 20 seconds is not worse than a strategy that kills everything in 10 seconds.

That doesn't make sense. There's a reason why DPS is a very important metric in pretty much all combat games, Starsector included. All other things being equal, a strategy (or fleet setup, loadout, etc.) that kills the enemy fleet faster is better than one that kills the enemy fleet slower. The faster strategy means that it can churn through more enemy ships before CR/PPT becomes an issue -- or, alternatively, means that you could've committed fewer ships (saving supplies) and still have had CR/PPT not being an issue. It means you have more wiggle room, time-wise. Being able to kill enemy ships quickly is a good thing.

The context of this is that you were claiming that a ship which kills enemy ships quickly may end up doing less overall damage than a ship which is trading blows back and forth, and I was pointing out that this is incorrect because it takes a lot of time for ships to back off, spend some time with shields up doing nothing, vent, re-enter combat, etc., during which time they're doing 0 damage. So if you look at the overall damage per unit time, a ship which is churning through enemy ships will end up with more overall damage dealt. Not quite sure why you're then claiming that damage/second is unimportant based on that.

Your fury is very heavy on efficient/anti-shield damage (double sabot, minipulser, ir pulse lasers), so it is not surprising at all that it is more effective against remnants that heavily incentivize shield damage with their super efficient shields.

Your claim was that the Hyperion could bypass shields due to TP, and therefore may do less overall damage because of it. Again, this conflates "per unit ship" versus "per unit time", but even aside from that, I was pointing out that this isn't what the numbers ended up showing. If the Hyperion were successfully bypassing shields, you would see it do an outsized portion of the overall hull damage. But I was pointing out that the Furies did a bigger proportion of the total hull damage than the Hyperions (even after accounting for 20 DP vs 15 DP). In other words, contrary to your claim, the Hyperions were actually worse at hitting hull, even though the Furies only had a single Cryoblaster for anti-armor/hull, while the Hyperions had that plus a Heavy Blaster.

This isn't exclusive to Fury vs Hyperion, as if it's just because Furies were overpowered. Testing AI-controlled Odyssey vs Apogee vs Hyperion shows the same trend -- the Hyperions will underperform in terms of overall damage, and underperform in terms of proportion of the hull damage dealt relative to its DP, compared with the other ships. The Hyperions only did 10% of the overall damage and 11% of the hull damage, even though it's 19% of the DP. Screenshot attached.

The testing setup is as follows:
1. Take the desired fleet, in this case, 3 Odysseys (Cryoblaster/HIL on large energies, Hurricane on large synergy, Sabots on medium missiles, Xyphos/Longbow), 3 SO Apogees (Cryoblaster on large energy, Hurricane on large missile), and 3 SO Hyperions (Cryoblaster/Heavy Blaster/Ion Pulser), and attack a test fleet, in this case a 2-Ordos, 7-Radiant fleet.
2. Start off by grabbing objectives to get the full fleet deployed.
3. Gather the fleet together on the player side of the map.
4. Once the fleet is gathered together, set the fleet on Full Assault mode. (Note this cancels any previous player inputs.)
5. From here on out, no more player commands are given for the rest of combat. The player fleet is under complete AI control and is free to roam on their own, without any player guidance, until the battle completes. The player is merely a spectator once Full Assault mode is switched on.

It was done in 0.95a, but I don't think the results will change appreciably in 0.95.1a.

The main issue with Hyperions (and frigates in general, this is not unique to Hyperions) is that it tries to stay out of combat too often. (All officers were set to aggressive for all of my ships.) Even when it does decide to teleport in to fight, it'll take some shots briefly, then teleport out again, even though it's at low flux. It seems like by and large the Hyperions will say "welp looks like the enemy fleet is too dangerous, I'll just stay away until I see an opening" and wait for some other ship to create an opening (i.e. attack a ship and weaken it first) before coming in. (In RPG games, I think this is known as "kill-stealing", heh.) The biggest times where the Hyperions would commit to battle were 1) at the beginning, where there are a lot of isolated frigates to hunt down, and 2) at the end, when the whole fleet is concentrating their fire on the last few remaining Radiants. During most of the fight, the Hyperions would only go in sporadically, and jump out at the first sign of danger, letting the rest of the fleet do the bulk of the damage.

This is the opposite of what the Hyperion should do, especially since with SO it can teleport out to safety at will, so what it should do is jump in, shoot and absorb damage until it's at say 90% flux, then teleport out and let its flux dissipate, then rinse and repeat. But realistically the AI doesn't really "know" that it's commanding a Hyperion, and fighting against an enemy Hyperion doing this would be really annoying. So a lot of that potential is wasted.

Generally this seems to be the behavior of frigates, where they'll wait until there's an opening, or until there's a critical mass of them, before going in to fight -- they'll stay away until they feel there's enough to dogpile on a target, or until some other ship makes the first move. This is great for self-preservation for most frigates since they're generally pretty squishy, but it doesn't work out well for the Hyperion, who has the stats of a cruiser and should bully enemy ships around like it. But again that would make the Hyperion very, very annoying to fight against.

I think if you could somehow add up all the damage that was either fired at the hyperion and missed, or not fired at all because the ship was distracted by the hyperion, it would be a very large number, perhaps larger than the furies total damage tanked.

I highly, highly doubt it. The Hyperions simply aren't near the front lines often enough for that to happen.

r.e. the 2-Ordos test fleets as benchmark
I don't think a computer benchmark test is a fair comparison. At the end of the day, every computational task boils down to a bunch of basic operations/computations that need to be executed, and processors are measured by the number of computations per second they can do. On the other hand, different fights in starsector reward different types of damage, and different strategies unequally, so being able to deal damage quickly/efficiently in one fight doesn't necessarily translate perfectly to another.

Sure, at some level it's just some sort of basic operations/computations. Nowadays though processors aren't benchmarked directly by computations per second, but by how long it takes to complete representative tasks (or alternately, number of frames per second, which boils down to the same thing).

Granted, in Starsector, every single fight is unique. If you take any enemy fleet, and say add a frigate to it, I guarantee you the "optimal" fleet (whether you're measuring by minimum time needed to kill the fleet, or minimum DP needed, or whatever other metric), will be slightly different. Maybe the extra frigate means your fleet would be better served by something faster, or maybe the extra frigate has some missiles in which case it would've better had one of your ships had a bit more PD, or whatever. There is no single fleet that is going to be optimal (i.e. better than every other possible fleet) across many enemy fleets, much less across the spectrum of possible enemy fleets in Starsector, from the initial pirate D-modded frigate to Star Fortresses and Remnant fleets. So saying results from one test setup may not "necessarily translate perfectly to another" is a bit disingenuous.

I doubt anyone here is looking for "what is a fleet setup that is optimal for this one particular fight" nor "what is a fleet setup that is optimal for every possible fight" which doesn't exist. Rather, people are looking for "what is a fleet setup that is generally good across a wide range of fights" in Starsector. This thread is about evaluating the different ships, after all.

So you can certainly say "well, a 2-Ordos fleet isn't really representative of the fights that you'll encounter in Starsector". Sure. You can come up with your own set of 10, 20, 30, or however many different kind of fights that you think would be representative of fights in Starsector, and test out different fleets against those benchmarks to find what you feel is the "optimal" fleet in some sense, or the "optimal" ships to use. However, I don't have that kind of time. I prefer to test against one test fight, where I know that if my fleet does well against that test fight, it will do well against the vast majority of content in Starsector.

That's the purpose of using a 2-Ordos fleet as a test benchmark. If a fleet can do well against it, the fleet will almost certainly do well against pretty much everything else in Starsector, except for possibly some very specific fights. (I haven't gotten a chance to try this fleet against hypershunts yet nor the scripted phase fleet, for the simple reason that they were already over before I made this fleet.) It will do well against Star Fortresses. It will do well against regular faction fleets. It will do well against single Ordos fleets, the purpose of doing a 2-Ordos fleet (and sometimes a 3-Ordos fleet) is to stress test the fleet against difficult odds.

This is not the case if almost any other fleet were used as a test benchmark. The fight needs to be appropriately difficult, otherwise it loses its discriminating power between good and bad fleets (ships, loadouts, etc.). If you optimize your fleet against a faction fleet, there's no guarantee that it will do well against another faction's fleet, and it will almost likely fare horribly against Ordos fleets. It may or may not work well against stations.

So you're free go about making your recommendations on what ships are good or bad without accounting for how they would fare against Remnants. But that's going to lead people toward fleet setups which may do well initially, then get slaughtered when they venture away from the Core or against harder faction fleets, pretty much the definition of "newbie trap". I prefer to make recommendations based on how the ships fare against difficult fights, knowing that if they do well in those fights, they will almost certainly do well against easier fights.

This is basically the longer explanation for when I said earlier that a 2-Ordos is used as a test benchmark because I know a fleet that can defeat it can "punch down" against easier fleets, but if I use an easier fleet as a benchmark, it's hard to know if my fleet and the ships therein can "punch up" against more difficult fights. That's why the 2-Ordos fleet is relevant as a test benchmark.

IMO, any strategy that can beat all of the challenges in the game is pretty much indistinguishable from the others. Even differences in supply cost or money are pretty much irrelevant by the end of the game.

I'm not quite sure where you're going with this statement. My whole purpose for using a 2-Ordos fleet as a benchmark is that if my fleet can beat it, my fleet can beat almost every other fleet in the game (except for a couple of very specific fights) -- yet you say it's not a good benchmark, and then say this.

And if strategies that can beat the challenges are "pretty much indistinguishable from the others", well, why bother with comparisons? All comparisons need to be comparing against something, i.e. there is some sort of performance metric or figure of merit that's used to evaluate the value of different alternatives. Thus far you've said that supplies don't matter (i.e. it doesn't matter that the Hyperion, due to SO, uses up a lot of CR and thus needs a lot of supplies to recover afterward), DPS doesn't matter, how quickly a strategy kills doesn't matter, combat statistics don't matter, or at it least it mattered before when you yourself justified the Hyperion based on the combat statistics mod, but now that I can put up better stats using other ships, now maybe the damage stats from the mod aren't really that representative of effectiveness, or something. Then what's the purpose of a comparison when thus far you've said that pretty much everything used as a basis for comparison doesn't matter?

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: intrinsic_parity on December 22, 2021, 08:33:57 AM
The last reply in this thread is more than two months old, and a significant number of the ships and weapons used in the original examples got rebalanced in the last patch.... Why do you still want to argue about things that aren't even in the game in the state that generated the initial discussion????

FWIW, I still don't agree with a bunch of stuff you said, but there's literally no point in arguing about which strategy from the last patch is better. LMFAO
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Vanshilar on December 22, 2021, 08:53:59 AM
The last reply in this thread is more than two months old, and a significant number of the ships and weapons used in the original examples got rebalanced in the last patch.... Why do you still want to argue about things that aren't even in the game in the state that generated the initial discussion????

Eh most of the points brought up were about the general methodology of evaluating between different ships and have little to do with the particular game version. Use of a 2-Ordos test fleet for example, or whether or not damage per second or the combat statistics mod are useful metrics. Unless you feel like a new game patch suddenly means those points no longer apply for some reason.

Thus far I haven't seen anything in the patch that indicate any drastic changes, although I guess it depends on if the Hyperion TP cooldown changes the AI significantly. I won't be able to re-test the fleet until January due to RL but I don't foresee having to make big changes either. (Biggest unknown is any AI changes that I'd have to account for in the ship loadouts.)
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: intrinsic_parity on December 22, 2021, 09:19:09 AM
Well... I still would argue that no metric represents performance on its own, and there are tons of way to get value that don't reflect in the particular damage metrics you've chosen. I still would argue that Hyperion is uniquely able to safely TP behind enemies to distract them without putting itself in danger (like other ships would be on such extreme flanks), and I also would still claim that there's no point in arguing about which of two strategies are better, if both strategies can achieve all the same things and the only differences are incremental changes in time or supplies....

Also, you fury strat should be at the least 33% worse, since the Fury's DP got nerfed by 33%.... not to mention, that the cryoblaster and xyphos also got nerfed. I imagine it still works, but I don't think it's anywhere close to as 'optimal' now as you were saying it was then.

Hyperion got railed by AI changes. The AI is very over-cautious with it now, and I'm also pretty sure the changes to wolfpack (%ppt vs flat PPT) hurt SO builds quite a bit. As a player ship, it still seems decent but the PPT is still a bigger issue now IMO, and other stuff has gotten quite a bit better while it's fallen off.

So yes, I think a lot of stuff has changed that makes the original argument about whether furies or hyperions were better almost completely moot.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Vanshilar on December 23, 2021, 09:28:35 PM
Well... I still would argue that no metric represents performance on its own, and there are tons of way to get value that don't reflect in the particular damage metrics you've chosen. I still would argue that Hyperion is uniquely able to safely TP behind enemies to distract them without putting itself in danger (like other ships would be on such extreme flanks), and I also would still claim that there's no point in arguing about which of two strategies are better, if both strategies can achieve all the same things and the only differences are incremental changes in time or supplies....

You keep repeating the same assertions without supporting them nor addressing the points in any way. I've already addressed all of these earlier.

Also, you fury strat should be at the least 33% worse, since the Fury's DP got nerfed by 33%.... not to mention, that the cryoblaster and xyphos also got nerfed. I imagine it still works, but I don't think it's anywhere close to as 'optimal' now as you were saying it was then.

Fury was already set to 20 DP instead of 15 DP for the purposes of comparison, which you yourself mentioned earlier. All ships (Odyssey, Fury, Apogee, Hyperion) used 1 Cryoblaster so the nerf affects all of them fairly equally. (It may affect the Fury somewhat more since it has no other means of anti-armor/hull, whereas all the others had at least 1 other anti-armor/hull weapon.) Xyphos nerf just means losing 600-800 flux capacity for the ships that use it, out of ~25k for the Odyssey and ~13k for the Fury, hardly a major change.

Hyperion got railed by AI changes. The AI is very over-cautious with it now, and I'm also pretty sure the changes to wolfpack (%ppt vs flat PPT) hurt SO builds quite a bit. As a player ship, it still seems decent but the PPT is still a bigger issue now IMO, and other stuff has gotten quite a bit better while it's fallen off.

If anything I find the Hyperion more willing to stick around longer in 0.95.1a than before, which is an improvement. Previously as I stated above, the main issue with the Hyperion is that it'll teleport away unnecessarily at low flux, and it'll stay away from the fight hanging out at 0 flux unnecessarily as well. Now it'll actually let its flux ride up a bit before teleporting out which is a good thing.

Change to Wolfpack's PPT bonus just means a 20-second difference for the Hyperion, in a fight that lasts for roughly 5 minutes. You were the one saying the time doesn't matter anyway so this shouldn't be an issue.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: intrinsic_parity on December 23, 2021, 11:05:18 PM
I really can't comprehend how you can sit here and argue that nothing has changed and previous results are valid..... the fleets you are testing against are not even the same (new skills change AI core performance, radiant DP nerf etc.), the officers you were using are not the same (skill changes), there were relevant hullmod adjustments (hardened shield nerf), relevant weapon adjustments, relevant ship adjustments etc. Many of the changes do affect all of the ships tested, but that doesn't mean they affected them all to the same extent... When you change the parameters of a scenario, you have to re-test, you can't just claim that everything is the same with no evidence. Based on my experimentation on the patch so far, many things play very differently, and I have no reason to believe this would not also play differently.

Fury was already set to 20 DP instead of 15 DP for the purposes of comparison
No, DP was not changed for previous testing. I merely pointed out that the damage metrics for the ships that I was seeing (in my inexact testing) were very similar per DP if you arbitrarily changed the DP values when analyzing. That does not translate to actually adjusting the DP and testing. I did not adjust the DP values of furies, test them against multiple ordos and present results.

If anything I find the Hyperion more willing to stick around longer in 0.95.1a than before, which is an improvement. Previously as I stated above, the main issue with the Hyperion is that it'll teleport away unnecessarily at low flux, and it'll stay away from the fight hanging out at 0 flux unnecessarily as well. Now it'll actually let its flux ride up a bit before teleporting out which is a good thing.
I have directly observed (via damage metrics) that my AI hyperions with the same loadouts consistently do less damage this patch than they did previously (something like .5-.66 times the damage based on my very non-scientific observations) , so I have no idea what you think improved, but it has not improved for me, and in fact has worsened enough that I no longer use AI hyperions much.

Change to Wolfpack's PPT bonus just means a 20-second difference for the Hyperion, in a fight that lasts for roughly 5 minutes. You were the one saying the time doesn't matter anyway so this shouldn't be an issue.
As to the wolfpack PPT change, 20s is literally 20% of SO hyperions PPT (100s now with the change). Hyperions do not last 5 minutes, they need to do tons of damage very fast to get enough value to justify their use. They were able to do that last patch, but no longer do that in my experience. The fact that you think 20s is irrelevant indicates to me that you may not have actually experimented much with SO hyperions.

You keep repeating the same assertions without supporting them nor addressing the points in any way. I've already addressed all of these earlier.
All you did was make your own unfounded assertions about how going behind enemy lines is bad (with no actual evidence, just theory crafting), when I have direct personal experience that it works very well...  At the end of the day, I don't really care if you don't agree with me. I value my personal experience and testing over your theory crafting.

Both of us have just been spouting off massive amounts of theoretical arguments with zero actual evidence (videos, extensive sim testing etc.) on either side, so it's hilarious that you accuse me of not presenting any evidence as if you haven't been doing it the entire time.

It's obvious you're going to keep arguing every point I make forever so I'm going to stop responding after this.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: JUDGE! slowpersun on December 23, 2021, 11:55:55 PM
Well, I totally missed this gem!  I'll only comment on OP, don't really have a reason to wade through 7 pages of agree/disagree.  It is hilarious and nicely cogent, especially for someone who has stated that English not exactly their strongest suit since second language I guess (or just fluent in Google Translate, but it works).  They don't have many posts, and haven't been on in nearly 2 months (hope they doing OK), but compared to most self-proclaimed noobs, just a breath of fresh air!
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Vanshilar on January 05, 2022, 10:31:32 PM
I really can't comprehend how you can sit here and argue that nothing has changed and previous results are valid..... the fleets you are testing against are not even the same (new skills change AI core performance, radiant DP nerf etc.), the officers you were using are not the same (skill changes), there were relevant hullmod adjustments (hardened shield nerf), relevant weapon adjustments, relevant ship adjustments etc. Many of the changes do affect all of the ships tested, but that doesn't mean they affected them all to the same extent... When you change the parameters of a scenario, you have to re-test, you can't just claim that everything is the same with no evidence. Based on my experimentation on the patch so far, many things play very differently, and I have no reason to believe this would not also play differently.

No, when parameters change, you look at how the parameter changes may affect the metrics of interest. You don't need to re-test to know that Heavy Needlers are still better than Cryoblasters against shields even though both weapons were adjusted. You don't need to re-test the horsepower of a car just because it's painted a different color. As I mentioned, the changes in the latest update were basically nip and tucks to the ships involved. It means the conclusions will still be broadly correct, even if there may be a few percentage points of change here and there. (An example of a major change that needs re-testing would be phase ships due to the new phase mechanics, but that's not applicable here.)

Besides, most of your objections (Remnant fleets don't matter, damage results don't matter, damage per second doesn't matter, time to kill doesn't matter, supplies don't matter, etc.) have nothing to do with "you need new data due to the update" but are along the lines of "your method of testing and metrics of comparison between ships are not valid", an entirely different animal.

Regardless, testing the Odyssey/Apogee/Hyperion fleet again in 0.95.1a-RC6 still shows pretty similar results as before the update, as attached in the screenshot. I'm still seeing the Hyperion severely under-performing for its DP. It doesn't mean that a fleet shouldn't have a Hyperion or two, since a fleet needs some frigates for anti-frigate use and to help split up the enemy fleet, but claims that Hyperions provide cruiser-levels of damage are overblown.

That does not translate to actually adjusting the DP and testing. I did not adjust the DP values of furies, test them against multiple ordos and present results.

And the difference is, I did. When I said that Fury over-performed relative to the Hyperion, it was based on actually setting the Fury's DP to 20 in ship_data.csv for testing as well as comparing it at 20 DP to Hyperion at 15 DP for analysis. That's the basis for my statements.

If anything I find the Hyperion more willing to stick around longer in 0.95.1a than before, which is an improvement. Previously as I stated above, the main issue with the Hyperion is that it'll teleport away unnecessarily at low flux, and it'll stay away from the fight hanging out at 0 flux unnecessarily as well. Now it'll actually let its flux ride up a bit before teleporting out which is a good thing.
I have directly observed (via damage metrics) that my AI hyperions with the same loadouts consistently do less damage this patch than they did previously (something like .5-.66 times the damage based on my very non-scientific observations) , so I have no idea what you think improved, but it has not improved for me, and in fact has worsened enough that I no longer use AI hyperions much.

Nope I'm seeing Hyperions do roughly the same amount of damage; in fact sometimes somewhat more (since each run tends to vary). They generally did around 10-15% of the overall damage pre-update, and post-update they're still doing around 10-15% of the overall damage, though one run got up to 19%. (Since Odyssey is worth 45 DP, Apogee 18 DP, and Hyperion 15 DP, then on a per-DP basis the Odysseys should do 58%, the Apogees 23%, the Hyperions 19% of the overall damage.)

I haven't bothered to record videos of the fights post-update, since it's fairly annoying to set up to record for me, but an example of such a fight from pre-update (from 0.95a-RC15) can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUj-ggxn5Jk

As stated previously, the setup is to capture objectives to deploy the whole fleet, and have the fleet gather up. At that point, "Full Assault" mode is activated, and from there on out, no more player commands are given; my ships act autonomously under pure AI control, until the 2-Ordos enemy fleet is destroyed. All ship officers are aggressive, so there is no difference in personality. So the fight progresses with aggressive officers under "Full Assault".

Even so, the Hyperions can plainly be seen staying out of the fight for the most part. They engage enemy ships only about 15% of the time, meaning for any given Hyperion, around 85% of the time it's staying away from the fight, neither attacking enemy ships nor attracting enemy fire. In fact there are long stretches of time where all 3 Hyperions are just staying on the back lines (such as around 4:15 to 5:00, 5:14 to 6:40, 7:13 to 7:45, 7:50 to 8:24, and many others if I bothered to continue to keep track). Most of the time they just go in for brief bursts, fire for a few seconds, and then TP away at low flux (such as at Hyperion 1 at 5:00, Hyperion 1 at 6:40, Hyperion 2 at 7:08, Hyperion 2 at 7:45, Hyperion 2 at 8:35, and many others if I bothered to continue to keep track). They don't really use much of their available flux capacity at all.

The video was recorded in November; I made multiple such videos in October and November as a more general commentary on AI issues in Starsector (front line ships running forward while back line ships staying away, omni shields facing wrong direction, firing on farther away ships that won't get killed while ignoring closer ships that are overloaded or close to dying, inability to move around hulks, plasma burning into hulks then flaming out and zooming into enemy fleet, venting next to enemy ships, etc.), but didn't have time to review them until December, when the update hit.

Chances are it'll be some time before I record more such videos, but suffice it to say, I still see the same AI issues in 0.95.1a-RC6. For Hyperions, though, even though they still stay away a lot, they're at least letting their flux go up to over halfway before TP'ing out a fair amount of time now. So they sometimes get a higher overall damage than pre-patch, even though overall it's still pretty similarly low most of the time. They don't put out cruiser-levels of damage either pre-update nor post-update.

Both of us have just been spouting off massive amounts of theoretical arguments with zero actual evidence (videos, extensive sim testing etc.) on either side, so it's hilarious that you accuse me of not presenting any evidence as if you haven't been doing it the entire time.

That's projection. You've yet to give a single shred of evidence to back up your claims this entire thread. For example, you made a blanket statement -- that Hyperions put out more than cruiser-levels of damage -- without posting a single screenshot, details about fleet composition (which cruisers were it being compared against? What loadouts did they use? How was the fleet structured?), enemy fleet(s) it was tested against, testing methodology, rationale behind testing methodology, performance metrics, quantitative results of those metrics, and so forth. I've provided all this and more for two very different fleets (player-piloted Doom with Furies and SO Hyperions, 3 Odysseys/Apogees/Hyperions under pure AI control), all of which you summarily rejected, without providing any similar documentation of your own, nor any contrary evidence whatsoever.

You make repeated references to Hyperions doing a lot of damage based on the combat statistics mod, without ever posting any screenshots of it, yet when presented with actual screenshots showing the opposite, it became "well, actually, it's not that useful to gauge effectiveness".

Whereas you could have chosen instead to post your own screenshots of your combat results, then it would have been a much more illuminating discussion. For example, maybe you chose different enemy fleets to fight. Perhaps the Hyperion does much better against faction fleets or pirate fleets, which aren't as "threatening" as Remnant fleets, and thus the AI is more willing to jump in and fight, resulting in more damage. That would be a useful nugget of information, that for easier battles it'll help you "win faster" but that you'll need something more "heavy" in damage-dealing for endgame fleets. (Sort of like how frag weapons are good against low-armor ships but need something else to get rid of armor first against higher-armor ships.) Or maybe the cruisers you were comparing it against were slower (since I use high-mobility ships -- Odyssey, Fury, SO Apogee) thus the Hyperions could jump in early and get more time to do damage by comparison (while the cruisers were busy catching up). That would be useful to know too.

Instead it's just been a blanket rejection of anything to the contrary, and the only evidence put forth is "I see it in combat results (which are never shown), I see it with my own eyes, it's my personal experience" which on an internet forum basically amounts to "because I say so".

It's obvious you're going to keep arguing every point I make forever so I'm going to stop responding after this.

Perhaps it's for the better, since after multiple posts I've yet to see any credible objection and it's pretty obvious that different posters have different standards of logical consistency and evidence behind what they post. Realistically at this point I've moved on to other fleet setups and other topics anyway, so there wasn't much need to further revisit this beyond verifying that it still held true post-update.

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Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: TontonBoo on January 06, 2022, 05:12:34 AM
Not much value all around since it's a very personal taste and all that but :

Lashers being the worst is just a big no-no. For sentimental reasons probably. You can smash an Onslaught with half a dozen of these babies. That's 24 deployment. For a big bastard like the Onslaught. Individually weak, sure. But in a fleet and en masse they can transcend their on-paper stats. Like most ships do in fact.

That's why such a list - thumbs up it's really well done by the way - is at best very subjective and depends a lot on your way of doing things. And works only in a vacuum.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: Serenitis on January 06, 2022, 05:48:54 AM
I really appreciate the effort people put into these teir lists, even if they're literally meaningless for anyone other than thier creator.

The main thing to understand is, in order to be a good space captain you need to know how to hold a good grudge.
That might mean not doing business with a specific faction, not doing this one common thing because "reasons", or just outright refusing to use certain ship types because they're "cursed" (or you just don't like they way they look).
So I might disagree with many things said in this list, but I still enjoyed reading it.
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: TericAthnos on September 25, 2022, 11:56:20 PM

- Hyperion? In S-TIER?! Are you out of your mind?! That pile of garbage is B-tier at most. Yes, it has impressive, destroyer-grade flux stats and weapon mounts, but almost the logistics of a freaking capital ship, the most pathetic peak performance time in the game, and on top of it all, is made out of paper. Its ship system is pretty useless now for anything else than quickly closing the distance, and/or instantly putting itself in a dangerous spot where it cannot easily escape from and it dies. I don't see any practical use for it. The amount of nerfing this ship has received between the updates is absolutely comical.

Hyperion is absolutely A tier, possibly S when you stack all the relevant skills on top of it. If you put SO on it, it can use its teleport at will. With shield upgrades/skills and can take a surprising amount of damage and getting behind bigger ships to unload Heavy Blasters or Ion Pulsers is just too easy. Personally, I put a Heavy MG in the universal slot to bring down shields but you can do a lot with that mount. I like it without SO but getting out of situations is trickier because of the need for 0-flux boost to teleport. Other than that, it’s ridiculously good and easily worth the DP cost.

SO on a ship which already has the lowest PPT in the game and a tremendous CR per deployment cost? I'm surprised that thing doesn't start falling apart before it even gets to shoot at anything...

I beg your pardon? Do you actually used Hyperion? I know many players got repelled by x2 maintenance and ppt, i was one of them. But Hyperion really worth that much, it's a cruiser punch in a frigate body. With wolfpack and skilled officer it rips space and time on the battlefield. Clearly it's an SSS+ tier and 100% pick in frigate tactics, and it even good choice for admiral without red skills because how convenient piloting it is. PPT boosted like crazy also with said officers and wolfpack, and with reliable subsystems.
Scarab also sss+ tier just because 18 no cooldown sabots build exist.

Yes, the whole reason why I'm posting this is how many times I've been coming back to this frigate, and every single time the game kept reminding me how it's absolutely not worth it to touch it with a 10 meter stick.

Nope, It's not a cruiser punch in a frigate body lol. It's a destroyer punch with a survivability of a kite, a cost of (almost) a battlecruiser, cosplaying as a frigate, bundled with a gimmick system.

Being able to teleport behind enemy ship and blast it with ion pulsers sounds amazing, until you realize low tech ships aren't the only enemies, and omni shields exist. And if you REALLY want to do that, just go grab a Harbinger. That one doesn't even have to get behind the opponent to disable it.

There is nothing this frigate can do which another ship in the game cannot already do for a fraction of the cost (and can be deployed more than once). The fact that it needs officers and specific character skills to function just adds insult to the injury, and only proves my point.

Pretty much the only things Hyperion has going for are the teleporter (which gets more and more crippled with every update, and - again - right now is most useful for jumping right into a spot where Hyperion will die the quickest), and its flux stats, which indeed, are VERY impressive, but are still nowhere near a justification for its absolutely monstrous costs.

It's a definition of impracticality. It's kinda like a Hummer in real life - it's pretty, it's loud, expensive, burns a TON of fuel and unless you're going to use it to tow a freight locomotive, you really would rather drive any common city car for every day routine.

Hence, I'd place it at B rank at most.

If you actually have a basic braincells on how to pilot ships at starsector then you will realize that even in S tier hyperion is still an underrated ship

provided with support it could easily face to face against a capital ship (remember the sinking the bismar mission)
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: TericAthnos on September 26, 2022, 12:00:44 AM
Hyperion was a under the classification of a super ship meaning it performs better or maybe a little bit overpowered (Im looking at you doom) if it was piloted by an experienced player
Title: Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
Post by: CaptSaltee on October 02, 2022, 06:00:07 AM
Two things I want to notify readers about.

Hey,
1st post here. I just wanted to say that I actually signed up and created an account just to reply to you. Thanks for taking the time to put all this together.
I've had this game sitting on the backburner for a while but have always been on the fence about buying it. It really wasn't until now I've decided picking it up. I don't have vast amounts of time to play games, and when I do it's always nice to have a sort of jumping off point to help me along. Looking forward to your weapons ranking.