With the 0.9 update, came some new fancy death engines from Alex and David to slay. I hesitated for a while, thinking if making this post was worth the effort. But it's sunday and i have nothing better to do, so let's just do it.
After defeating the 0.8 final boss, i wanted to try something a bit harder. Stronger than the Remnant Nexus, we now have Star Fortresses, bigger, badder, tougher. Let's go monster hunting. The rules are the same as before, the only ship allowed is the SWP Excelsior
(with a new, shiny sprite by Tartiflette!). The skills used are pretty much the same as before, the ship loadout is different though, the EMP vent trick doesn't seems to work against the new space stations, so i'll have to fight with my guns only.
Spoiler
A few tweaks here and there depending on what opponent i faced, but the main idea is here.
I'll also talk a bit more about the how and why of the battle, but let's begin with the first opponent : the Jangala mid-tech Star fortress !
A tough one, whose main strength is its ability to unleash a storm of missiles after me. Both a blessing and a curse, i can use its excessive firepower to power the Excelsior, but using the phase shunt (the projectile absorber) at the wrong moment will guarantee an overload, and depending on my positioning, a sudden drop in my life-expectancy.
The star fortress taught me a few things about flying the Excelsior, about how to pick my targets. There are three things i look for when facing an opponent : What is dangerous to me? What is Useless to me? What is important to me?
From that, i know which targets i have to pick first, in that order : Dangerous>Useless>Important.
For exemple, what is "dangerous" is what can kill me easily (duh), what is "useless" is what i can't make use of, what is "important" is what i must use to power my ship.
Unfortunately, what is "dangerous" also tends to be what is "important", since things that can kill me can also be exploited by the phase shunt. In the case of this Star Fortress, the dangerous targets are the side modules with the Trebuchets LRMs that are the most likely to overload and kill me, but are also invaluable as they provide a large and reliable amount of flux. Therefore, i have to leave them for the last, so they can power me for the entire duration of the fight.
The useless here, is the carrier module. It doesn't have enough firepower to keep me going, and it also must die in order to defeat the space station. Also come with a hint of dangerous, while the Warthogs are too slow and lack sufficient alpha strike to threaten me. The Kopeshes are more problematic, and will relentlessly hound me. Their tendency to go straight at me, with the Trebuchets LRMs swirling around macross style, don't leave me much room to manœuvrer. This one must go down first.
As seen in the video, the Reapers are not used to kill, but to strip armor. The Excelsior's guns exceptional DPS lack armor penetration, hence the use of torpedoes to lay the hull bare for my Flux Shunt Cannons. So far the only way i found to kill a star fortress quick enough before running out of CR. I have to be quick, or i won't be able to drill through all those armor modules, but too eager, and i'll get boxed-in by Trebuchets, Kopeshes and mines.
Speaking of mines, some might have noticed some weird explosions on the station without my intervention. I noticed that the Mid-tech Star fortress's mines tends to slowly drift in the last position of the target. By flying very close to the station, the mines will have the tendency to drop toward it, and with some luck, damaging it. Sometimes, it's not a bad idea to fly next to a close one to voluntarily trigger it and cause friendly fire on the station.
Once the carrier module is gone, the main battery platform is next. The Mjolnirs with their fast, accurate projectiles are too dangerous to be left last, i need to kill it now by exploiting the two remaining missiles modules. Being the toughest module, it takes a while to bring it down. Once it is done, the two side pods are relatively "easy" to take on, just need some patience.
And now for opponent number 2 : The Eochus Bres High-tech Star fortress.
This one is a weird beast. A total glass cannon compared to its mid-tech sibling, it make up for it with its ability to spam an ungodly amount of mines. The first few seconds of the battle, despite looking relatively peaceful, are probably where i died the most. The Star Fortress have no qualms about spawning mines straight on top of my ship, and each mine is a one-hit kill. And if i overload, all the modules will go crazy with the mines, surrounding me with up to a dozen mines!
Fortunately, mines are long range only weapons, and the station won't (usually) spawn them if i'm sticking close to it. The Gargoyles drones are roughly delimiting the no man's land, beyond that, death is assured. Close range isn't exactly a safe zone either, fighting that closely to something with Autopulses can be quite perilous as well, but less unfair at least.
From the get go, i'm sniping the citadel module, the dangerous one, with torpedoes, exploiting the splash damage to weaken the weapon platform hiding behind it. Once it is done, i can follow in with the carrier module (the useless one) that doesn't offer me enough flux. Plus i was very nervous flying around a bunch of Cobras, it was unlikely they could hit me, but they certainly could overload me, better getting rid of this one quickly.
And then, the second gun battery module (the important one), i screwed up my first attempt at killing it, forcing me to wait in a long, awkward pause for the shield opening to come back.
You'll notice i mainly used the mines to power up the Excelsior here. Baiting the station by getting a bit too far, just enough for it to spawn two or three mines to eat, and going back in. Once i got the trick, the high-tech star fortress proved to be surprisingly easy-ish.
For the third opponent, the Coatl battle station :
Wait, that's not star fortress! Well, yeah, i know, i know... But this one is probably the toughest of the three, and after a few attempts to take down the Chicomoztoc low-tech Star fortress... Yeah, nah, not gonna bother. fundamentally, it's the same as the battle station, just with more armor, which is the problem.
(mind you, i'm fairly sure it is possible to beat it, just ridiculously hard)
The low-tech battle station is a battle of endurance. Its heavy armor make it incredibly difficult to take down, and where the other two space stations only have four modules to destroy to win, this one have six! This is a race against the clock, no time for caution, every seconds must not be wasted.
So, what is dangerous here? The citadel module with Mjolnirs/Gauss, while not deadly, is definitely an annoying because of its wide side coverage, the Gauss will be bothersome when i'll try to fight the carrier modules. Fortunately not too important to power up my ship either.
What is useless? The PD modules, nothing but flaks, vulcans and salamanders, not useful to me, and fortunately extremely vulnerable. They must go down first and quickly, the citadel will be second to give me room to breath.
What is important? The carrier modules are quite useful with their Piranhas and Pilums, but the main gun battery give me more flux. I decided to take down the carrier modules first, although i would use them to weaken the combat module before. After nearly 9 minutes of punching through that hunk of metal, it finally goes down.
Phew, alright, that's enough of that goddamn soul-sucking ship for now. I guess i can get back to playing normal Starsector for once.
