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Author Topic: Anyone else like the Dominator?  (Read 13808 times)

fatrat

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Anyone else like the Dominator?
« on: December 24, 2018, 03:26:07 AM »

I'm in the middle of my first hegemony run on my first full playthrough and I just picked myself up a dominator... or 3.

I got the first one as Salvage, thought it was awesome won me a couple fights and I bought the second one and then I found a third one on some more Salvage. I love it so far, it's tanky, can output okay dps and has a lot of room for Point defense. So what loadouts do you use on this ship?
« Last Edit: December 24, 2018, 03:35:20 AM by fatrat »
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Baxter

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Re: Anyone else like the Dominator?
« Reply #1 on: December 24, 2018, 04:19:33 AM »

The dominator's a top tier cruiser because of its survivability. Perfectly suitable to personally piloting or letting the AI take control.

This is the build I tended to stick to in my last game https://i.imgur.com/DnfopgM.png two hellbores for long range armor cracking, railgun+hypervelocity drivers for shields, vulcan cannons because they're probably the best small mount PD in the game, and the annihilator pods (on alternating fire) for emergencies. Annihilator rockets fulfill two important functions, firstly they provide a constant stream of rockets to force the enemy to keep their shields up, and secondly the rockets block shots. They're almost more useful defensively than they are offensively and I'd recommend you take them always for if you need to take on something big or don't have the flux to shield or hull to spare.

If you want to go brawlier, replace the hellbores with Hephaestus assault guns, the drivers with heavy autocannons, and now you can go much closer in. And if you really wanna play risky try safety overrides and devastator cannons. Safety overrides causes the devastator cannon shots to burst consistently at your new (extremely short) max range, and they allow you to chew through stuff at point blank range. Zoom in and facetank people with impunity.

It's built to kill anything in front of it with ballistic weapons and it does that extremely well, but it needs side/rear coverage either from other dominators, destroyers/frigates, or carriers, because otherwise it can easily get swarmed by smaller ships. Loadout wise it's very flexible and you can generally make anything work, although when I put my AI officers on them I tend to give them brawling stuff instead, in case they get swarmed and I can't get to them in time.
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Serenitis

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Re: Anyone else like the Dominator?
« Reply #2 on: December 24, 2018, 04:52:27 AM »

Quote
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:
Spoiler
[close]
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.
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Megas

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Re: Anyone else like the Dominator?
« Reply #3 on: December 24, 2018, 05:43:53 AM »

Dominators are good.  Loadout tend to be limited by what I can find.  Heavies are usually one Mark IX and the other is among Hellbore, HAG, or Mjolnir.  Mediums are often single flak (other weapons are better, but I usually do not have them while I use Dominators).  Smalls are dominated by Vulcans.  Missiles are Annihilator pods.
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Tei

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Re: Anyone else like the Dominator?
« Reply #4 on: December 24, 2018, 07:52:16 AM »

I find it good in player hands but garbage in AI hands. The Dominator suffers from Heavy Slow Ship Disease, otherwise as that thing where they never use burn drives to chase down faster ships and when faster smaller ships decide that its a good idea to hover infront of the Dominator and block its firing arcs.

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Megas

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Re: Anyone else like the Dominator?
« Reply #5 on: December 24, 2018, 07:57:12 AM »

At least Dominator is disposable.  AI does alright at killing things with it.  They will be plenty of big things for it to engage.
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MajorTheRed

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Re: Anyone else like the Dominator?
« Reply #6 on: December 24, 2018, 08:40:23 AM »

Dominator is fine for assaulting Orbital and Battle stations with proper loadout:
-Twin Devastator for thoses pesky missiles/fighters, or 2 Hellbore for cheapness and making hole in the armor.
-3 Reaper launchers. You can even fire then on background part of the station because damage will splash against the modules, or wreck the plate armors in front of the main modules.
-3 railguns or 2 hypervelocity drivers for kinetics
-flacks and vulcain for pds.
-ITU and flux mod for venting
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Linnis

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Re: Anyone else like the Dominator?
« Reply #7 on: December 24, 2018, 10:56:39 AM »

As stated by people... Dominator is great in AI hands for attacking stations or big targets. Its also great in player hands because of burn drive and two large mounts. Ease to get and relative toughness in combat means they are worry free ships in your fleet.

Though in endgame fleets I find they never catch up to anything before my other faster ships and fighters destroy everything....
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fatrat

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Re: Anyone else like the Dominator?
« Reply #8 on: December 24, 2018, 12:14:02 PM »

This is what i'm using at the moment, not sure how good it is, but it really doesn't like dying. ;D




Open to feedback though.
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Inventor Raccoon

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Re: Anyone else like the Dominator?
« Reply #9 on: December 24, 2018, 12:19:25 PM »

Expanded Magazines doesn't do anything for that Dominator, as it only applies for energy and ballistic weapons with charges, mostly just the Burst PD Laser and Antimatter Blaster. I'd probably swap out Hardened Subsystems (the Dominator already has excellent longevity in combat and isn't really aching for any more) and put the spare ordnance points into vents and capacitors so you can keep firing for longer.
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Euphytose

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Re: Anyone else like the Dominator?
« Reply #10 on: December 24, 2018, 02:26:45 PM »

I love them.

Extremely boring to pilot yourself, but give those babies to the AI and it's just one big chunk of armour nobody's going to crack.

I use dual mjolnirs, two standard flak, rest as vulcan cannons. edit: And reapers for the missiles.

Heavy armour, integrated targeting, max vents, and the rest depends on the officer.

You can even use a reckless officer, as long as you follow to help, it's all good.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2018, 02:59:20 PM by Euphytose »
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fatrat

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Re: Anyone else like the Dominator?
« Reply #11 on: December 24, 2018, 02:50:06 PM »

Expanded Magazines doesn't do anything for that Dominator, as it only applies for energy and ballistic weapons with charges, mostly just the Burst PD Laser and Antimatter Blaster. I'd probably swap out Hardened Subsystems (the Dominator already has excellent longevity in combat and isn't really aching for any more) and put the spare ordnance points into vents and capacitors so you can keep firing for longer.

I mad some changes, this is what i'm working with now.



I like it so far, i kept Hardened Subsystems because i do want to be able to out last the other fleet in long fights, so far it's worked out, that and i like to use myself as bait. 
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Linnis

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Re: Anyone else like the Dominator?
« Reply #12 on: December 24, 2018, 07:58:05 PM »



Honestly, I like this setup better for both self-pilot and AI

Lets talk some Dominator

1.Missiles
Missiles on the dominator are questionable. Pilums and are fairly weak in this version so let's throw that out. Harpoons and sabots are great but they work best in close range combat, but the only time a dominator gets into close combat is when he is surrounded. Sabots AI uses questionable and for players, you can use armor to take damage to win in the flux-war (the emp resistance helps in that regard).
Also, 3x rockets are nice but I prefer the ship to be more rounded in what enemies it can fight.

2. Weakness to fast targets
Frigates and fighters often give dominators huge trouble as they can move to locations where the dominator can't really fight back. Railguns are perfect for dominators as they are excellent in shooting at fast targets like frigates and fighters. Also, the mortars on the back can really help get rid of some fighter presence. Vulcans I find really don't benefit from extra firepower. They either stop targets or fail by a long shot.

3. Mod choices
Flux conduits' anti emp effect is overall great on ships that are slow or have bad shield coverage like the dominator. Also, I find the AI takes advantage of it and flux vent more often.
Stabilized shield has a great effect for the Flux/s on the dom and the hardened shields prevent the AI from getting insta flux gibbed in matchups versus other ships with similar ranged fire-power.
Capacitors are great for ships that end up soaking a lot of attention also.

4. Low armaments
You noticed with 30 vents and stabilized shields we get 750 flux dissipation - 112 shield - 400 from railgun and flack (that you want always to be firing) thats a 200flux per second gain. It is very important to have this as dominator can often end up constantly locking its flux levels. This way while turning, the 200flux gain will recover in battle or also be used to help take some damage from the 75% damage to shield.

5. Only 1 HE
Pretty simple. Yeah, you might have trouble versus an onslaught or killing a venture in decent time. But a Hephaestus is enough to strip the armor on everything else in good enough time.

The end effect in small fleet battles is you have a solid platform to absorb damage and still be able to shoot back accurately at swarm targets. In large battles, This dominator setup can endure for great lengths and with two large ballistics is great damage no matter what. The only problem is targets with extreme armor.
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CopperCoyote

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Re: Anyone else like the Dominator?
« Reply #13 on: December 24, 2018, 09:40:36 PM »

I love to use the dominator when i want to win at all costs. I'm not using any at the moment because i havent found any of the juicy low tech blueprints, but typically i go heavy kinetic and use harpoons to threaten breaking their armor at great ranges. (i don't have to actually fire them i just have to have the missiles selected.)

In the center two rear i put vulcans in the 4 lateral rear smalls i have the modest LMG (i wish i could make it non-pd) in the left and right smalls in front i put light assault guns in the front center i have another vulcan. In the mediums single flak. in the larges mark 9 or rarely the largest version of railguns (gauss i think? they're hard to find)

I always want dedicated targeting core (or itu if i have it) and the aux thrusters to be a little less vulnerable to small ships. I also like to put in hardened flux conduits and armored engines if i can so can laugh off salamanders (typically i do't have both, but if i do i "upgrade" rearmost left and right lmg to light AC and remove the other 2 all together)

I make sure to put as much as i can into vents and if any is left over then into caps.

What i love about this setup is most of the weapons are common. you just need the hulls and you're ready. The NPCs use this pretty well too, and it does decent at attacking pather and pirate bases (so long as you remove the pather fleets first)
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Dudok22

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Re: Anyone else like the Dominator?
« Reply #14 on: December 25, 2018, 02:52:40 AM »

I like my Dominator with 3 reaper launchers in the front (otherwise I consider it a waste of potential  ;D ), 2 mkIXs, 2 flaks and vulcans. Sometimes I like to add something else in the forward smalls like railguns or some additional HE. For hullmods:  ITU, Extended missile racks and Resistant Flux Conduits.   

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