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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Messages - Demetrious

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 5
1
Kind of stopped reading at "HAG tickles capital armor"

Same.

2
Like intrinsic, I've rarely discovered things I otherwise wouldn't have,

So you're saying if exploration rewards (derelict hulls or weapons caches hidden in nebulas well distant from the primary) were significantly shinier, the return on investment would be more attractive? Hmm.

3
but I haven't noticed it being exceptionally profitable per unit of time. The main motivation seems to be using the items and planets discovered.

Yes. I typically find exploration makes me a modest profit - enough that I'm not actively losing money when I wander into the far reaches of the sector and only return after two years off the grid with a hold full of survey results and such.

Exploration CAN net you obscene amounts of raw resources that you are then challenged to sell off at profit - which is when I start hitting convoys to "create" opportunities - but the problem is if you're playing fair (as in, not abusing the console mod to open your storage from wherever you are) actually bringing back those hauls requires a few Atlas freighters (that you have to drag around at cost) and... well, nobody does it. Nobody bothers. I certainly didn't!

4
General Discussion / Re: XIV Onslaught loadout ?
« on: January 31, 2024, 07:05:13 AM »
@Demetrious - I enjoyed the writeup. Do you pilot this yourself or let the AI run it?

If you self-pilot, do you have any advice for AI-controlled builds?

I don't see a lot of discussion of AI Onslaughts. Most people who use it seem to prefer it as a player flagship, and it is always a heavy contributor to total damage dealt. People seem to prefer Legion and Conquest for AI capitals.

It's definitely my personal flagship. Someone on here posted a brilliant Onslaught fit that works very well in AI hands (as in, survives Ordos in AI hands) but I can't seem to find the post. Perhaps someone else remembers it?

My brother in Ludd what have you done. I make a hobby of collecting regrettable Onslaught fits I find on Reddit and such, and this... is a work of art because it looks like a horrible fit, but it actually works. It has EVERYTHING. Large slot PD. Thumpers. I see this take the field, rearing upwards into the clouds like Cthulu risen, and am struck dumb by it's horrifying, Stygian grandeur.

I'm grinning quite widely as I write this response.  ;D

Out of curiosity, did you actually find the constitution to pilot that obscene loadout? Because in my case, it took me three weeks after theory-crafting that it should work to bring myself to configure my XIV in such a fashion.  ;D ;D ;D

SHINY AND CHROME!

5
It's provocative on purpose, but again, in my new run, nothing beats, and by far, the gazillion credits you'll get from plundering unknown systems, black holes and such.
I reeeaaally question the balance here ...

You know how you can make tons of money selling goods to markets with severe shortages? And you often have opportunities to buy a ton of surplus goods here and there - such as, if you base out of the Abandoned Terraforming Platform in Corvus, you're often near Jangala, which often has surplus Organics?

But then you buy two Atlas freighters and you want to unload a ton of Organics, or maybe a bunch of raw materiel you got from a mining station out past the core worlds, and there's no shortages anywhere to let you make bank?

If a shortage is required but doesn't exist - create one.

6
General Discussion / Re: XIV Onslaught loadout ?
« on: January 29, 2024, 03:19:39 PM »
Here's a generalist build that I use for my own XIV which looks ridiculous, but is actually quite lethal, and has the advantage of being nearly impervious to missiles and torpedoes. Due to the side-mounted Devastators, it also has the advantage of being extremely good, even when surrounded. One weakness to keep in mind would be the sharp fall-off of HE damage as soon as your PCLs run out of ammo.

My brother in Ludd what have you done. I make a hobby of collecting regrettable Onslaught fits I find on Reddit and such, and this... is a work of art because it looks like a horrible fit, but it actually works. It has EVERYTHING. Large slot PD. Thumpers. I see this take the field, rearing upwards into the clouds like Cthulu risen, and am struck dumb by it's horrifying, Stygian grandeur.

I... I kneel.

One endgame build is to double down on the range boosted, high efficiency small and medium ballistics, then back them up with 3 Hephaestus Assault Guns (with either the currently overpowered PCLs or Reapers). It might sound wild to be fighting ordos with so much HE, but its more that smaller mounts have so much efficient kinetic that the build is still balanced.

Incidentally, that's what my Onslaught looks like, and I've found this to be true. My current fit:




This is refinement of fits I've been using since before Burn Drive was interruptible. As you can see this ship is built explicitly to enrage my friends whom wail about "muh flux" and to channel my dark, roiling hatred of large slot PD. More specifically, this ship is built around a few key principles:

1. Burst fire > else. This thing is extremely shooty, the point being to confirm kills. The Hephaestus Assault Guns will rapidly over-flux your ship, so you must pulse autofire for that weapon group on and off. In a dynamic, high-pressure situation, leaving the HAGs on long enough to strip armor off the target is more than enough; the medium slot autocannons hit more than hard enough to overcome residual armor protection. As Thaago says, the kinetic firepower of the medium mounts alone is impressive - I've occasionally found myself wondering why my Onslaught's holding off multiple enemies without actually killing any, only to realize I'd forgotten to turn my HAGs on. Which leads me to my second point:

2. The Onslaught is a broadsides warship of the line. Due to weapon mount layout, you can only bring approximately 2/3rds of your firepower to bear on any single point target at any time. You can absolutely stick your nose into the middle of a fight and lash out to both sides with enough kinetic suppression to control the entire field. The astute observer will notice I split my heavy autocannons into two weapon groups per-broadside, so if I'm tight on flux I can choose not to engage e.g. a random frigate to my port-side to enable continued engagement of an Atlas II on my starboard side. If you need to hold the line, this ship can do it. Which means-

3. You can create your own opportunities to pounce. The Thermal Pulse Cannons are of course significant; also helping to mitigate the broadsides nature of the ship somewhat with their forward facing, but the four medium missile mounts are MVP. I'll typically bring this into the main mass of the fight, hold my position (carefully managing HAG fire to control flux) and when I've picked off the eager beavers or just thinned out the frigates/destroyers (to avenge the Sim Onslaught, of course,) then I can pick one unlucky SOB opposite, burn-drive into his face and dump TPC and missile fire into him before flipping the HAGs on. HAGs rip through hull at a hilariously fast rate, which is where the real lethality of this build comes from.

4. The Onslaught's best anti-torpedo option is its shield. I've tried many things on Onslaughts to stop those hateful evil little frigates from ramming torpedoes into my side-rear areas and hands-down the best solution I've found are accelerated + omni shields. Nothing else comes close - even if you sacrifice firepower (and the ability to run off flanking frigates) by swapping the side-rear autocannons for flak guns, there's only so much firepower they can muster and a Gremlin unloading its entire torpedo armament into you will get through. Even if you elect to make Baby Ludd cry by fitting large slot PD the side larges don't have great angles on the side-rear quarter. Just man up and take those Reapers on the shield like the Domain intended.

Some notes:

-The HAGs allow this thing to devour anything on the field. You absolutely can make this a Hellbore fit if that's your preference, but the OP savings are marginal due to Heavy Ballistics Integration (12OP). Furthermore, the high ROF and projectile velocity of the HAGs allow them to engage even frigates effectively. The flavor text of the HAG concerning it overpowering weaker shield emitters isn't just fluff - it can do that.

The missiles are to-taste and can be swapped out as needed. Given my emphasis on securing kills you may wonder why I don't just fit Harpoons, which is a fair question. For starters, with HAGs I don't need them as much (though often wish I had them,) but secondly, I prefer sabots for flexibility. When fired whilst under burn-drive, they "fly formation" with you, staying inside your ship model, meaning they typically fire their second stage and hammer your enemy just as you de-accelerate in front of them (and they can't be picked off by marauding fighters or something, either.) Since they're guided/maneuverable, they can also handily engage attackers that get into my vulnerable rear arc; especially useful if I've got a destroyer or cruiser pressuring me that my twin HMGs can't flux out and drive off. And lastly, if I'm in big trouble and need to relieve the pressure, sabots are far more likely to help than torpedoes or harpoons, as they will drive up flux on attackers who aren't feeling flux pressure, and will punish with EMP anything that tries to armor-tank them. Given how much firepower the missile mounts bring, the build's non-reliance on them makes it a bit easier to customize for particular fights or expected enemies.

The second S-mod is to taste. Astute observers will note I've only built in one hullmod here, and that's because I'm still deciding exactly what I want. The S-mod bonuses for cheaper hullmods are one of Alex's best ideas and really stand out here.

Of course the default option is to build in Integrated Targeting Unit and install Hardened Shields, which are 1. always good and 2. especially useful for this build given the propensity to take Reapers directly on the shield. But other attractive options:

Build in Expanded Magazines and install Armored Weapon Mounts, which increases the TPC's recharge by a whopping 50%. The TPC's have a flux-damage ratio of 0.6 which is nothing to sneeze at for the Onslaught, given its flux stats.

Build in Armored Weapon Mounts and install any of the other 15 OP hullmods normally: This gives you a 10% overall increase in armor (which is significant due to how much armor the Onslaught has to begin with) and gives you a 10% ROF increase on all turrets, which leans into the burst nature of the weapon fit.

Build in Resistant Flux Conduits (for 10% faster venting, for a total 35% bonus) or Accelerated Shields to double the shield raise/turn rate bonus and always catch those wayward reapers.

Concerning skills:

Polarized Armor and Impact Mitigation are, of course, must-have skills for any armor-tanking ship. Impact Mitigation's elite bonus also neatly counteracts the maneuvering penalty of S-Mod heavy armor and leaves you with a 25% bonus on top. Polarized Armor's elite benefit (faster venting) is likewise indispensible for managing flux. Given how much kinetic suppression this ship can throw around, it can often create enough breathing room to vent by chasing off hostiles close enough to shoot. (I still wouldn't do it without supporting ships nearby however.)

Point Defense and Helmsmanship are obviously not terribly important for this ship in contrast to other low-tech options or builds you might try, but don't hurt to have. Helmsmanship especially.

Missile Specialization is obviously a lot more attractive since having Burn Drive more often isn't very powerful on its own, though it does give you a hilarious amount of speed during late-battle mop-up.

Damage Control isn't as useful on this build as it usually would be, especially if you take the grug option of building in ITU so as to fit Hardened Shields. But it never hurts for armor tankers, esp. for a poorly fluxed ship like the Onslaught. We all catch a stray torpedo now and then, that's the breaks.

Ballistic Mastery is of course mandatory, but the elite bonus helps a theoretical Hellbore fit quite a bit, and makes the already fast moving HAG projectiles hilariously lethal to fast cruisers, frigates, and other hateful little beasts. The Sim Onslaught calls from beyond the grave for vengeance!

Comments welcome etc.

7
General Discussion / Re: Starsector Speedrunning
« on: January 21, 2024, 03:20:51 AM »
Every game has a unique speedrun scene; calibrated to the realities of the game, the engine, the nature of the gameplay. Starsector by in-game clock is definitely an interesting speedrun; maximizing utility of every move made, every fight fought, every credit spent. It may never be a popular genre, but it will most certainly be interesting.

8
General Discussion / Re: Lore: How dangerous is the Player in Starsector?
« on: January 21, 2024, 02:55:36 AM »
Can He/She Reduce The Domain Of Man To Cave of Man (Stone Age) Aside The Persean Sector?
Can He/She destroy all the Legion Battlegroups of the Domain of Man(The 14th Battlegroup might be the weakest)?
Who really is the Player?Are there clues about Him/Her?
Is He/She Really A Human Since He/She is Level 15 At Max Level Surpassing [SUPER ALABASTER REDACTED BY COMSEC](Pretty Obvious)?
Thank you.  :-\

Yes.

They can.

One of the best parts of the actual writing of Starsector is how the game acknowledges the player's agency. Before the story was added, the ability of the player to make colonies out in the darkness of the long-abandoned far reaches of the sector was thematically clashing. After the story update, we saw a LOT more activity out to the furthest reaches of the Sector; Galatia academy science missions, Tri-Tach darksites, etc. It became a lot more realistic for there to be a wealthy mercenary captain who had the balls, the wherewithal, and above all the starting capital to found a colony out in the black.

Moreover, the setting makes it very VERY clear - through the multiple murdered worlds and multiple planets slowly going to hell as aborted terraforming projects fail progressively - that the state of the Sector is tenuous and fragile. Biard is right about this much: re-opening the gates is a matter of existential survival for all the Sector. Sooner or later, the center will no longer hold, and everything will collapse. And this fragility has opened the doors to multiple upstart powers. In multiple star systems in the Core Worlds there are pirate owned worlds, and despite their fleets often getting beaten like red-headed step-childs, you note their colonies don't get sat-bombed out of existence for transgressing other's claimed systems like yours do. All this - from a single upstart Domain officer who went rouge. To say nothing of the "lion of Adama," the former Hegemony officer and war hero who pulled a Ceasar and parlayed his great military success into an independent state in the heart of the sector.

The player character is, unabashedly and unashamedly (from a storyteller's point of view,) special. They are a rare and uncommon breed of person; capable of building and leading great fleets, and eventually commanding the loyalty of entire armies. But, crucially, they are not unique. They are not without precedent. Such characters have risen in the history of the Sector before. And such - if the Sector survives that long - will rise again. But the player character is the right uncommon person, in the right place, at the right time.

And thus they're the only ones that might save everyone from the danger that lurks in the turgid, pulsating darkness of hyperspace.

The only one that heeds the faint music.

9
General Discussion / Re: Vigilance is Rad
« on: January 01, 2024, 07:55:24 PM »
"Better than a Buffalo" may not be a strong sell. But the last few updates have made the Vigilance a fine choice for Midtech enjoyers and Derelict fleets alike.

Y'know... not so long ago I tried running multiple Buffalos in my early-game fleet to see if I could get Pilums to work worth a damn. This was before the significant Pilum re-balance, and despite modding weapon.csv to give them decent hitpoints (before, they had the same HP as a rocket!) the old Pilum never did live up to the "if you field enough of them they become effective" promises. I've been meaning to try it out again now that Pilums have been re-balanced, but you make a compelling case for the Vigilance.

There's a lot more to this game than just end-game S-modded super fleets and if you don't embrace that the early game is always going to be a slog. Bravo, OP. I'll give this a try.

At that point, if what you want to do is field medium missiles, the question isn't "which frigate is best for medium missiles?", it's something closer to "what's the best platform for medium missiles at my DP budget?"

I'll say this much: it's not always about the DP budget. I'm a big fan of the Condor, simply because it's the most efficient DP-to-flight-deck ratio in the game. But that's not the whole story. A couple of Condors with Thunders is always excellent as a dedicated frigate/phase ship hunter, but not always with standard-range deployment fighters like Broadswords, because the Condor is so dreadfully slow that the fight will often move past their deployment range. And in one playthrough I found myself sticking reinforced bulkheads on my Condors because they so frequently ended up getting cornered and slaughtered by a lone enemy frigate before anyone else could intervene (again, because they were so far behind the frontline.) Frigates don't have much tank, to be sure, but just by dint of being small and relatively fast they can often stay out of trouble that a fragile Buffalo cannot. And if you're looking at the D-mods as a boon and not a negative, then you don't really care how often they get blown up. This especially matters because a recovered ship has to rebuild it's CR from scratch, to say nothing of hull/armor repair cost; that's going to be significantly higher for a destroyer or cruiser than a frigate, even a gaggle of them.

So there are other considerations here past just the dp-to-medium-missile-slot ratio.

10
Bug Reports & Support / Re: Black Holes
« on: January 01, 2024, 07:46:56 PM »
Just to be clear, what's the object that's in there? I'm having a hard time making it out.

Embeded your pic for convenience.
Also I believe Alex mentioned that AI fleets will become better at avoiding black holes in the next patch, and will e-burn to unstuck themselves if it happens.

Thank you! And, yep. Though certain fleets (such as [REDACTED]) don't normally have access to e-burn, so are still more susceptible to this sort of thing.

My bad. It's a derelict drone bounty fleet. As you've already discerned, some fleets are prone to getting sucked into the black hole.

Now I know that bounty fleets typically hang out around a terrain feature; either a jump point or a planetary body. For whatever reason (probably related to how the game engine loads in systems) bounty fleets of any kind routinely end up smack dab in the center of the black hole, even if, logically, they should have at least sometimes been loitering near a planet far enough away from the black hole to not be inexorably drawn in, e-burn or not.

Just one of those unforseen edge cases, most likely.

11
Bug Reports & Support / Black Holes
« on: December 30, 2023, 11:11:14 PM »
https://imgur.com/a/SvkIkgg

I believe this speaks for itself.

12
Blog Posts / Re: Skill Tweaks
« on: December 23, 2023, 03:09:39 PM »
Must admit I'm not a fan of Damage Control's elite effect just becoming another damage bonus. The logic of "bonuses that only apply if you screw up" is not solid in this instance, because the simple fact is that you often screw up when playing Starsector. In particular, this skill mitigates something nasty that you can't easily savescum past or spend a story point to avoid, namely, the Surprise Reaper In The Face. Maybe for some people that's never a problem, but I favor flying Onslaughts with as little PD as I can get away with and I use Burn Drive aggressively so, occasionally, one of those damnable little frigates gets lucky. Things going wrong is part of the basic pew-pew gameplay; and skills that allow me to take more risks - or pack on fewer PD guns for more offensive burst firepower - is always welcome in my book.

13
General Discussion / Re: The Writing in this Game is Amazing
« on: December 18, 2023, 09:40:36 PM »
I'm at my heart a setting writer - a deeply unhinged setting writer, but I repeat myself - and Starsector's given me a lot of inspiration in how to do character and setting writing.

I am most decidedly not a setting writer - in my WIP (which I'm supposed to be working on right now, but here I am typing this,) I already know the deep emotional motivations of all my characters and all that but the setting boils down to "aliens bad, geek'em" and a firm knowledge of why the 1,000 ton supertanks are Totally Justifiable And Not Just Bolos With The Serial Numbers Filed Off. (They are.) But I'd like to mirror your observation(s) from another angle - character writing. Because we ultimately interact with this world through its characters. They're what bring it to life. And the characters are well-done. I could praise that a bit - and, in fact, I will, because I've been playing through the new version at last (got laid off recently) and I've screenshotted almost every single story (and side-story) textblock so far as a proper post talking about the writing in Starsector has been on my mind for years now. Alas, I have a story of my own to finish. So for now: yeah, the writing is good. Not news to anyone with eyes. But there's something more to it I want to point out - how it's integrated with the game.

Gargoyle and Zal are both too much of a quirky 2 kool 4 skool characters for my taste.

Sure. Gargoyle's an archetype; the Clever Rad Hacker Mans - the brilliant mind constantly in need of stimulation and challenge being part of it (and one true-to-life; I know the type to various degrees.) But archetypes exist for a reason; they exist in the real world. The only mistake is treating them like a straitjacket. Gargoyle is definitely terrified when you come back to pick him up after the relay hack, he knows he's put his ass in a sling. But then you take him to the Academy and his usual... personality just bounces off Biard like a stone off a glacier.

And that's where the game aspect comes in - first conversation with Biard after the hack, she cuts Gargoyle off on comms abruptly, and you can go to the comms menu, buzz him and continue that conversation. And he expresses delight that wow, you asked, you actually asked! You get to see a different side of him; one that's appreciative; you get a sense of how he's been chafing at Biard's... personality. You get to sense things that've been happening off-screen, the world moving without you, and it's something you can miss if you don't feel like calling him up. If you don't like Gargoyle and his 2kew4skewl BS, you can skip that conversation entirely. The fact you exercised agency as a player in contacting him is acknowledged, it's used in the story.

The big story update, of course, was a bombshell for the game. But I find this latest one has redoubled that. Sure, there's more side quests, and those are great, but what's better is how they tie into the rest of the game - the Luddic Pilgrimage one, for instance, has an impact later when you need to shoo a fleet of pilgrims away for a gate-scan. And of course, there's many more bar events now, anywhere you go, as well as the security fleet conversations. You are making a stir in this world; you're a player, shifting the very bedrock of the Sector with your actions, and people are taking notice. This world is alive, you can poke it and it pokes back. Prior to the big story update, many said that colony building didn't fit the theme; the core worlds've been struggling to survive for 200 cycles and then you pop up and found your own empire in a few years? Please. But after the story update it became explicit just how busy the outer worlds of the sector are; research outposts and Tri-Tach dark sites and scavengers who've run around often enough to sell you local hyperspace topography data. And when your impact on the sector is made known, it stands to reason that you'd be able to found new colonies - and keep them alive. You're not nobody - you certainly have to earn your victories, but you're an Adama, someone who can single-handedly reshape the sector through acumen, savvy and battlefield skills. The narrative-focused colony interaction things in the next update are perfect tie-ins to this.

Unlike most of my friends, I play with utility-only mods, and that's because I like the vanilla ships; especially how each one has a history and function that's more than just flavor text. They fit into this world; you can see whence they came from what they do now. The Eradicator stood out to me in the patch that added it - for securing the flanks of a battle-line, like swordsman covering the flanks of a pike formation, its innate speed is more than enough and ammo accelerator fits the "more firepower" battle-line doctrine. And the burn-drive variant's existence echoes a likely debate in the Domain admiralty over maintaining cohesion amongst the battle-line in advance, and perhaps the first mutterings of the "cruiser school" adherents as they watch the Admiralty seize upon the bright idea of a fast, maneuverable cruiser... and then ruin it with their obsession with ballistics instead of rapid striking power. The pirate variant doesn't exist because it's perfect for pirates, it's still around because of that; the origins aren't hard to discern. In other words, the ships are characters in this story too. The mechanics serve the story and the story serves the mechanics.

I spent years writing "CYOA" style stories (you may know them as "quests,") and aside from the oddity of second-person, present-tense (which I still slip into unconsciously whilst trying to write other things, egads,) player agency is what really makes that kind of writing stand apart from all others. Some people run them as interactive narrative experiences, and others incorporate more "game" elements; complete with players getting to roll digital dice and hosting sites with software to support such features. And Starsector really reminds me of a CYOA done well, where the player and writer are working in concert, with a shared vision, and breathing the world they imagine. That's had enough to pull off with actual ongoing dialogue between player and creator - much less in a single player game.

But it goes beyond mere verisimilitude via dint of excellent execution. It works because there is a narrative, a protagonist, agency, velocity. As OP says the game tackles difficult subject matter artfully and the character focus is key to that. But many poor writers can, and have taken that approach and still stood up cardboard cutouts to fill various roles. And one such cardboard cutout is "the downright evil villain who nonetheless has a point." Many poor writers will pen such a character and fill his mouth with pithy philosophy before the player fills it with the business end of a blaster because it's just so much airy BS that doesn't actually land, because nowhere in the story, the world, is there any evidence for it. But in Starsector, when Livewell Cotton, an actual factual terrorist from a faction that's killed millions and sundered entire worlds, sits down across a table from you with tea in his hand and tells you to beware... I was inclined to listen. Because the visit was occasioned by a vessel in my fleet that is tangible evidence of something inhuman, well beyond the ken of anyone in the Sector. Maybe a further evolution of rogue AIs left to their own devices in the outer systems... and then again, maybe not. Because something collapsed the extra-dimensional hyperspace matrices of the gates, and in the eerie unreality of that place you've seen ghosts dance and twirl and more than that... and as you stood by the silent adamantine rings, you heard a faint whisper of ethereal music. The kind nav officers insist they hear whilst the men at the weapons console roll their eyes and the shield officer's mouth twitches.

You listen, because the terrorist has a point. Everyone does. But they don't know the half of it; gripping to tails and legs. Through a quirk of fate, you're the only one who can begin to glimpse the whole elephant.

And it's terrifying.

... so the writing in this game? It's good.

14
I always say to such tests that they're unfair, you're using one gun that has wildly more DPS but also uses much more flux, and the other gun both uses much less flux as OP. No wonder the conclusion will be "this things kills quicker". It's like testing the Assault Chaingun versus a Heavy Mauler.

Determining effective DPS versus any one ship's armor is the first step in making meaningful comparisons in terms of flux expenditure required to kill X. It's definitely higher for the HAG. I'm curious as to what I get for that expenditure, and where the break-even point lies in terms of armor strength/hull strength. Maybe I should bring torpedoes instead of sabots when using HAG, I'd love to know!

15
So I got curious and sat down to try and quantify the DPS of Hellbore vs. HAG against various armored targets. I can't even begin to account for the DR of the armor lowering over time - much less the way armor cells contribute armor strength and all that - but I did throw together a very basic spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mykpPB3GPNcwBJg3wjHwzWJuPi-58ohSdX8yLV2e0r0/edit?usp=sharing

The tl;dr is that against a stock Onslaught's armor (1,750) Hellbore is significantly better at removing the armor, but once down to residual armor DR on stripped hull (5% of original armor value) the HAG is much better at chewing through the hull... which is necessary to secure the kill, after all.

I tried testing Hellbore vs. HAG in the simulator, but it's hard to really get a good test. For instance, using a Venture as target practice, the HAG actually had a quicker time to kill but only because it's sheer DPS significantly helps beat down the shield when the enemy manages to raise it again, getting back to hammering the armor quicker. Lots of variables like that. Is there any way to do a more controlled test?

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