Anyone else like the Dominator?
YES
Very fond of putting twin Devastators on the front and working around that.
SO is very recommended for the extra disspation, extra speed, AND guaranteed turn rate boost.
My current build starts of as:
A player Dom is arguably one of the edge cases where Efficiency > Solar Shielding due to the repair/recovery boost which allows you to chain battles. It also helps that is slightly mitigates the crew/fuel hog tendencies of the Dominator itself.
If you're not chaining, then Solar is maybe a better use of OP. But even then, the fuel and crew savings are useful if possibly not compelling.
I would love to be able to fit blast doors on there as well for more crew protection, as crew is probably the biggest limiting factor on long-range missions, and this thing is basically facetanking everything by design.
H. Subsys. is there to mitigate the peak time reduction of SO, and give you more time once your CR starts ticking down. Because you will absolutely need that for some of the larger battles where you can't deploy your full force.
Once you unlock loadout design for the extra OP, the first thing to get upgraded is changing out the autocannons for railguns. Railguns are just so, so much better. More efficient, faster shots, more consistent hits, more per-shot power.
And maybe upgrade the flaks to dual. But, if you keep the standard flaks, and change a pair of the rear vulcans to single MGs, then you can fit both efficiency and solar.
Harpoons on the front are for flexibilty, and are not bad at breaking armour.
For maximum power fit reaper pods. You're not nearly as flexible, but 12,000 HE damage applied to anything is going to make you smile.
Sabots don't work as well here as you're going to be in close to your target, maybe close enough the second stages don't have time to pop. And even if they do, it kind of limits you to smaller targets or relying on fleet support as Devastators take a while with heavy armour.
Annihilators are okay, but not great. They just can't fire fast enough as they're designed for constant pressure, which is not that helpful close in when you want something gone
right now.
Basically, I love SO Devastator Dominator.
It's only real downside is that without support it gets shut down hard by salamander spam. And because it is literally murder incarnate, it's prone to making you confident enough to overextend yourself into to some spectacularly humbling smackdowns.
It is the sector equivalent of dual-wielding axes. And it is magnificent.