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1

General Discussion / Re: beams

« on: January 09, 2025, 09:08:26 PM »

Paladins are nice. I like to pop one on my Radiants, specially if I'm already using s-modded expanded mags(for either VPDs, autopulses or IR autolances).
Hate using any small PDs on capitals, and well, while Paladin doesn't show good numbers in terms of individual damage, the number of shot down missiles and fighters is extremely high. That keeps the rest of the guns shooting at actual ships and increases overall uptime nicely.
The fragmentation damage is also not terrible. If the ship is the type where sparing a single large energy isn't necessarily detrimental to overall damage and flux utilization, Paladin does just fine.

2

General Discussion / Re: beams

« on: December 13, 2024, 03:53:58 PM »

Beam loadouts don't get the opponents to drop their shields, though. They get them up to smth like 90% and switch to another target immediately. They may get back to it if everything is on high flux, but unlike hard flux, the switching itself immediately starts the recovery...overall, EMP having some form of shield penetration chance at high flux is fine.
But yeah, elite skills repair is probably too fast, at the moment.

Beam centric support in a destroyer escort is kind of okay, but hard flux damage seems to perform better even on those. Overall beams just don't improve kill times. Maybe if there were some good medium energy long range HE beams, those could act as a better support.

On the stalling tactic itself: that's what sustain(as opposed to high alpha strike) beam loadouts do, but it isn't like they're great at it to the point that e.g. one ship is stalling five and you get numerical advantage elsewhere, it is more of a 1:1, maybe 1:2.
Mobility and tanking generally does a better job for stalling.

That being said, all of the above is a side effect of focus fire. If wolf pack elimination orders actually forced ships to converge on a specific ships until it is dead, beam loadouts would be quite strong, and soft vs hard flux would matter much less as opposed to range and DPS/damage per flux.

3

General Discussion / Re: beams

« on: December 13, 2024, 06:26:06 AM »

Beam fleets kind of suffer from the AI behavior, where the ships engaged with multiple targets tend to flux up one target, switch, etc. It is already a painful point with hard flux, as with non-optimized setups there's a high chance of enemy ships backing off before being finished(EMP not really reliable unless it is a certain omega weapon). With soft flux, the enemy has a much easier time recovering immediately, usually this results in running out of CR vs high ordo counts.

For pure soft flux beam fleets that I tried with some limited success, it is either:
- capital oriented fleet with tac lances aiming for instant killshots, this often suffer from lack of focus fire, not hitting the target with entirety of tac shot, firing at multiple ships simultaneously etc
- or mass frigate(trying to flux everything up simultaneously on pure OP efficiency...suffers from force projection, not being very good at surrounds and interfering with each other, plus getting oneshot sometimes

Both are meh vs high ordo counts.
The "flux everything at once" approach maybe would work better if it was mix of beam/missile or beam/fighters, in other words, things that can shoot over allies, but I didn't have much success with it. Resonators in high numbers make it work, but they make anything work.

Ordos to good vs EMP, and ships in general too prone to switching targets as they prioritize safety over finishing the target. Beam ships good at stalling from safety, but that's about it.
Or at least, most EMP methods are too OP and flux costly to get enough of them to disable engines reliably.

4

General Discussion / Re: Omega Weapon Tier List

« on: June 16, 2024, 10:55:12 AM »

Kinetics usually top the chart. Except, this one is ridiculous long range, hard flux damage, homing kinetics that also happens to be nearly flux free.

They're like having a converted hangar Sarissa wing support, except way longer range, homing, and cost less points to field. That's probably the best direct comparison, not a large common missile slot.

Comparing with common missiles is a bit awkward, as it is a comparison between sustainable DPS and limited ammo.

5

General Discussion / Re: Omega Weapon Tier List

« on: June 15, 2024, 03:04:54 AM »

Resonator MRM's are nuts an and improvement on pretty much any build that can fit them. Missile spec is necessary though, but having a couple of them justifies it already.

VPD's were decent before the buff, now they are extremely good. Extended magazines make them shine.

Reality disruptors are...well, they could use a tier of their own.

6

General Discussion / Re: Escort Sunder/Medusa, storm needler Onslaught vs 4 ordos

« on: February 21, 2024, 01:43:00 AM »

Used a similar approach to pretty much same result, with 2 radiants, executor, 5 sunders and some 3 brawlers.
Slightly different skills and loadout on the Sunders - took energy weapon mastery instead of systems expertise, more vents instead, and a tac lance instead of HIL. (My capitals have HIL's, and tac lance on supports helps a bit with suppression / getting the kills)

If you have a reality disruptor, putting it on a support Sunder is also very effective.

The only things I really needed to care about are - occasionally manually retreat a Sunder from a Radiant charge, pull back an over-eager capital, or re-position the line when enough remnant gets killed in the initial part of the fight, to a point where a large flank is coming from their spawning position.

I got to say that I didn't really notice any increase in strength for Ordos relative to the previous patch (well, all I did was swap out a second executor for sunders). But then again, I'm also benefitting from the elite skill buffs on my Radiants, so that's probably why. The changes in deployment priorities for remnant kind of made it require more attention throughout the fight, but the end of the fight got a bit easier, without having to(or at least having to do that less) fight pure Radiants on expiring CR or some downed Sunders.

I'll have to run comparisons to pure capitals for time to kill on the same groups of Ordo, though, as I'm not convinced yet that all these Sunders are performing better than another Executor.
They might be, e.g. the damage contributed and pro rata DP for all sunders summarized is usually between Radiant and Executor, while they're also tanking some damage and letting the caps dish out more damage in comparison. But pure caps may be better at securing kills, Sunder damage is a bit more spread out. Overall, would need to compare.

7

General Discussion / Re: Escort Package on destroyers is hilarious.

« on: February 10, 2024, 12:34:42 PM »

Would be nice if the manual escort assignments (right-clicking on a ship) counted towards the limited of expected assignments on the target.
E.g. if you manually put 2 destroyers on a capital, frigates will consider that capital with escort order unprotected and will flock to it and block pathing/not capture points.
But if you don't right click, you may end up in a situation where frigates (without escort packages etc) are escorting while destroyers (not built for speed) are going off capturing points.

Currently my only work around is to manual order everything to their job and that gets tedious.

8

General Discussion / Re: Escort Package on destroyers is hilarious.

« on: February 07, 2024, 07:06:26 AM »

That looks very nice, hype!

Also settled on 2 escorts per capital, any more and the uptime falls off a cliff.

9

General Discussion / Re: Escort Package on destroyers is hilarious.

« on: February 06, 2024, 02:38:25 PM »

Hmm. Escort order + right click generally goes into behavior of ships not staying at max range relative to [all nearby enemy ships that are slower than them]. They may be staying at max range relative to the ship they're firing at(which is not guaranteed either), but kinda ignore anything closing in on them from the side, instead of retreating. Or they'll do something like going into range of all guns of a capital just to shoot at a distant cruiser.

Wonder if defense order + right click (and having some kind of order for every ship in the fleet, so not everything goes to defend the cap) does better, will give it a try.

Edit: defense order makes ships frequently leave the hullmod range.

As for escort order, I see 2 problems with it:
- Very often, when a destroyer starts to engage a ship, it will move forward far enough as if to a range that would be sufficient without the buff. I am not sure if it is misjudging its own range, or somehow tries to prevent the other ship from escaping before trying to fire, but this makes no sense for beam weaponry.
- The above-mentioned problem of ignoring everything else that's happening at the time. So e.g. our cap is facing 2 other caps, a destroyer would move closer-than-necessary to one of the caps, and while it is shooting at it, ignore the fact that it's about to be obliterated by the other capital that's already firing. Like, it doesn't try to retreat or maintain the range advantage over multiple targets when escorting, something that it would do if there was no escort order at all.

I think the escort order behavior:
- Completely prioritizes staying in the escort zone over its own survival
- Doesn't go behind the escorted ship? (Not sure about that, as timid officers to that, but cautious never do it)

What that means, is if the ship needs to retreat to not die, but the only safe spots are either behind the capital or out of hullmod range, it will choose to die, instead.

10

General Discussion / Re: Escort Package on destroyers is hilarious.

« on: February 06, 2024, 09:02:20 AM »

Tried sunders going max beam range, myself.
From what I observed so far, despite having that much extra range, a cautious officer still goes in the middle of its range and then gets killed off, being almost as squishy as before.
And timid officers hide behind the capital and spend most of the time not firing at all.

It'd be really strong if the destroyers stuck around the capital, not blocking its line of fire and taking regular potshots at max range, but they just aren't doing it. Or at least not consistently enough to the point that getting another capital instead isn't going to have higher uptime on guns actually firing.

Haven't tried enforcers yet, maybe those would do better on sheer damage output, and their survivability probably would be OK.

11

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96.1a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: January 02, 2024, 08:51:50 PM »

Hmm.
VPDs were already my favorite weapon for Radiants. The lower range and flux requirements were things that could be played around on a ship like that. Now it is going to be absolutely devastating...
But then again, so many other exciting changes to try!

Any patch that makes me want to try to give escort destroyers another try is a great patch!

Missile AI changes sound exciting.

Also wondering how the long engagements will play out with different ship deployment priorities. Expect the end of the fight to be easier (which would make it viable to close out with e.g. degrading CR or after losing some ships), but also there's going to be a looming threat of a Radiant or a Nova coming out at any point and bursting down something exposed, requiring more awareness. The Apexes deploying earlier, though, sounds like a nerf to Ordo strength(they're too slow and lack firepower to help the rest of the fleet, when they all stick together at least they achieve wasting time and CR with their durability) - but that's in theory. Eager to see how it plays out.

12

General Discussion / Re: Elite: 9 Medusa vs Double Ordo (video)

« on: August 02, 2023, 07:03:16 PM »

(Thank you for all the details, and sorry about sort-of derailing the thread. I see what you mean about the phase skimmer; I can see why it might do that while still generally moving to retreat. I'll take a look! Edit: and, that should be fixed.)

More on-topic: I gotta say, that one Medusa playing distraction really reminds me of like... microing a protoss probe in the enemy base in Brood War

The proberto is not locked in the enemy base. The enemy is locked in with the probe.

On topic: very nice!
Do you think that RFC is better than solars there?

13

General Discussion / Re: Destroyers

« on: July 31, 2023, 07:25:33 AM »

Did you try Flashes?

2x Flash could in fact keep up with an Onslaught for the 4 Condors, but unfortunately runs out of replacement rate. Could go Flash Warthog.

I didn't try 2x Flash, because I wanted something that is likely to kill frigates fast, not just zone enemies or kill slow targets; for damage on regular ships, I feel like while 2x Flash could keep up, it'd simply reduce the efficiency of Executors, aka solving a problem that doesn't really exist.
Flash Warthog couldn't keep up, and any combination of no Flashes at all was doing relatively terrible.

14

General Discussion / Re: Destroyers

« on: July 30, 2023, 11:57:36 AM »

Yeah. I tried exactly this thing, except with Executors, swapping one for Condors.
The idea was that I'd be able to secure a location with each executor having full uptime on the incoming ships, and instead of having one stuck behind the line unable to fire(and for the most part being useful for swapping with a fluxed ship), I'd have full uptime from Condors with large range.
And the fighters would help murder frigates early on.

In theory. Unfortunately, after trying nearly every combination of fighter loadout, they just weren't doing the damage compared to having another Executor that's firing half the time, despite being in a position where they're safe and the enemy is in range

15

General Discussion / Re: The Dream Battle, Updated: 5 Executors defeating 5 Remnant Ordos video

« on: July 14, 2023, 07:30:56 AM »

Facing a large army of frigates and/or scintillas, I like to do a fighting retreat from the top of the map to the bottom. That pretty much ensures that:
- I don't get badly surrounded
- I don't get ganked up on by fighters
- I don't lose out on killing speed early on, e.g. I can usually collapse on the initial deployed force with my capitals from 2 sides; and then the northern side turns around to deal with the reinforcements. Initial kills get quickly replaced by fresh enemies, so my ships get full uptime on their guns.
- As I retreat further backwards, the reinforcements for Remnant take longer to reach the front line, giving some breathing room during frigate phase
- Generally, this means that I end up killing Scintillas as I come back up from south to north, after dealing with the frigates.

There isn't that many of them alive by that point, though. I think their AI moves them into capital gun range, when they're giving chase; and they seldom make it out. By the time I'm done killing Brilliants and Apexes get to come out, there's maybe 1-2 random Scintilla remaining.

On another note, I was running 2x Executor 2x Radiant, and I gave each of the Radiants one Paladin PD. They're entirely capable of spending their flux and more while using one of the slots on the PD, and with s-modded Extended Magazines it isn't actually bad damage(mediocre range soft flux energy, but efficient).
The thing deletes fighters and missiles very fast, which also makes the ship AI not fire the big guns on the small stuff, not turn around unnecessary; overall while it didn't feel like a mandatory addition, it enhanced ship behavior to where it made better use of the rest. For example, swapping the PD for another Autopulse or HIL was not an improvement. Over the entire engagement one PD would kill 300-400 missiles and 80+ fighters, over half the fighters and 80%+ of the missiles the entire ship would destroy.
And it trivialized dealing with fighters. Maybe those Scintillas would make it out of capital range, if Radiants were wasting more time hitting fighters with beams and Autopulses.
Not sure if there's something like that that could fit on an Executor, though. I wouldn't want to use something as a PD if it wasn't capable of clearing fighters / missiles before ship decides to turn in that direction and fire main guns there.