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[Lucky33]

"Ion-something" is not enough. Full discharge of EMP Emmiter cant disable even small turrets (in test it took three discharges). Disabling at least Mediums with Ion Pulser is kinda moot. Tempests were getting fluxed by HMG fire sooner than they were able to disable them. You need to literally stay there doing absolutely nothing to get anything but Small mounts disabled. Downtime of small mounts even without Automatic Repair is 1-2 seconds. With AR it was brought online just as soon as it got disabled (message "disabled" was still on screen when "online" popped). Mediums had about a second of downtime (only a little longer than Smalls). However, as I said, for that to even proc I had to turn weapons off and wait. Something like that was with the engine. Time it took under barrge of mixed Heavy Blaster+Ion Pulser+several Ion Cannon fire to get flamed out was longer than to bring it back online.

I dont know if there is any way to boost EMP damage. Ordnance Expertise 3? Its only 15 percent anyway.

Also I was shocked that Reaper (without skills) dealt only 200 hull damage. Its not that I'm trying to recommend to tank Reapers. Just a fun fact.

[Goumindong]

Wait WHAT? Smiley
Got a target in range, do I:
- use my capacity FOR ITS MAIN PURPOSE to murder it and vent
- plink at it and give it a chance to retreat/get help

Gotta notify everyone with the pulse laser/heavy blaster tempests that they are doing it wrong.

I should have said "almost"

If you're in a situation where the enemy is firing back at you then every flux you spend over dissipation reduces your ability to win the fight.

As an example we can suggest two hypothetical ships. Each with two heavy blasters, .8 shields, and 720 flux dissipation after shield cost. Ship 1 fires 1 heavy blaster and ship 2 fires both. Ship 1 will take 800 hard flux damage from ship 2. It will cap out in time = Capaicty/800. Ship 2 will take 400 hard flux damage and 720 soft flux damage. It will cap out in time = capacity /1120. At any point in the fight ship 1 will have lower total flux than ship 2. If either ship vents ship 1 will hit 0 flux first. If ship 2 puts its shields down ship 1 still has cap to spare to shoot and will now be doing armor and hull damage to ship 2.

Ship 1, simply by not firing its heavy blaster above its dissipation rate, wins the exchange. Ship 2 has to stop firing and/or lower its shields before ship 1. This will hold true with any weapon that has a flux/damage ratio over the flux/damage ratio of the shields in question when firing above the flux dissipation rate. Flux dumping into hull and armor is fine because damage sticks. But flux dumping into shields does not work well. There are exceptions to this when you're firing a weapon that goes from under flux neutrality to over flux neutrality but in general its a good rubric to not plan on firing more weapons than your flux can contain.

The Odyssey is in a position where the small weapons that it is likely to fit are not good at damaging hull and armor. And not good enough at damaging shields to justify using them over the main guns. You should not be using them on your primary target the majority of the time. If you're using them in order to kill ships you may kill a single ship you're shooting faster if that ship is both smaller than you and unable to significantly challenge your flux capacity. But you're reducing your ability to continue to fight other ships, to move swiftly between targets, and to take down the larger and more dangerous craft in the game.

We can extend this to the Harbinger, using its own hard flux in order to reduce the cooldown on its reapers while draining its peak time significantly. Doing this is dangerous because you are susceptible to many targets shooting at you. You need your capacity in order to make bombing runs. But even then i was ignoring the cooldown on the reapers when considering its "dps" because the point was not "the harbinger is bad" but that the amount of DPS you do is hard limited by the amount of damage you can do and the Harbinger has a hard limited amount of damage. If you retreat and bring another you have to consider the time you spend flying to/from the edge of the map back to the battle. If you have to assign other ships to kill small ships you have to avoid them while maneuvering to kill the larger ones. If you run out of peak time or reapers then damage stops while seconds keep ticking away. The Odyssey has no such limitations.

Re: My potato.

My potato is not a sudden occurrence. I have made my potato known (on the forums at least) and on discord at least a few times. I wasn't setting up a xanatos gambit by mentioning it earlier.

[Edit: Unfinished Section was here] [Removed]

@Draba
Interesting point about HMGs on Onslaughts - I've been using the 'ring of dual flaks' for the frontal mediums in order to no sell missiles and fighters. Do you find that having an HMG or two leaves you with enough area defense?

(A 450 range HMG has a real range of 720 with ITU - Remnant/Tritach frigates and destroyers running assault guns are probably going to need to cross into that range to fire. Ouch for them!)

[Removed for space]

@ Retry
I absolutely agree - I consider Resistant Flux Conduits mandatory on Onslaughts both to help with what you are saying and to increase their vent speed (and thus offensive output). Onslaughts also benefit from having an escort to cover its 6 (preferably something big and slow). It makes comparisons a little difficult because of how to assign value (every ship gets better having a nice escort!), but the very real vulnerability of an Onslaught's engines can be overcome for many vs many combat.

I like HMG's on capitals for this reason but i think that longer range kinetic support or HE damage is better in the mediums. Largely it depends on how you set up your small slots.  Flack is a good compromise if you haven't ringed your ship in small slot PD and installed IPDAI. Though i prefer single flack to dual flack (at least in the front)

In terms of small slot kinetic weapons i actually like Light Autocannons over Railguns. The extra 160 range on rails is nice but not amazing and the flux efficiency is nice as well. But the 3 OP per mount really add up on the Onslaught with its hilarious amount of slots. If you're just fitting the front outside ring that is worth 18 OP. Almost enough to upgrade a terrible MK IX to an amazing Storm Needler.

[Euphytose]

The AI is really good at activating shields to selectively tank damage. It has perfect shot discrimination and very good control such that it can very easily shield tank HE while letting the Kinetic through.

That's true except for Sabots. For some reason the AI keeps the shields up in this case, and it's very easy to overload them. In my opinion the Sabot is one of the best missiles for this reason. I even have a Sabot Pod on my large missile mount on the Apogee.

[DeltaV_11.2]

The AI is really good at activating shields to selectively tank damage. It has perfect shot discrimination and very good control such that it can very easily shield tank HE while letting the Kinetic through.

That's true except for Sabots. For some reason the AI keeps the shields up in this case, and it's very easy to overload them. In my opinion the Sabot is one of the best missiles for this reason. I even have a Sabot Pod on my large missile mount on the Apogee.

The AI tends to fear the Sabot's EMP damage significantly. To be fair, 2k EMP damage is a lot, equivalent to several seconds of ion beam fire or a tachyon lance burst.

[intrinsic_parity]

Kinetic weapons generally have a 2:1 flux ratio into shields meaning they almost always trade flux positive with enemy shields except specific ships with skills from officers that can achieve sub .5 shield efficiencies. This is how low tech and mid tech ships are effective with bad dissipation. If you are building up twice as much hard flux in the enemy ship as you are building soft flux in your own ship, you will win the exchange unless they have drastically more flux capacity. Dumping damage into shields with kinetics and following up with zero flux HE missiles is a very effective strategy (annihilators on onslaught and dominator are incredible for this). Also having lots of armor and the best PD (flak) means you can avoid taking on hard flux from enemy fire by keeping shields off. Another consideration is that soft flux dissipates passively even when shields are up meaning trading 1:1 on flux is in favor of the attacker.

Heavy blaster is a terrible example for discussing flux trading. It already has sub 1:1 flux efficiency before anything else is taken into account. It's really mostly good for anti-armor and bullying ships with much worse flux stats. In a battle of ships with equal flux stats, heavy blaster loses the flux war to pretty much any other weapon bar HE.

Basically, use weapons that are efficient against shields and you will win the flux war even with bad dissipation. Certainly it's nice to have tons of dissipation, and if you are using energy weapons that are generally pretty mediocre vs shields, you want to be close to your dissipation limit for sure, but going over that limit is not bad if you are also building up more flux in the enemy ship than you are in your own, which is the point of kinetic weapons.

[Goumindong]

Yes, but we are discussing the Odyssey; it does not have any ballistic slots and has no way to do kinetic damage besides missiles. Heavy Blasters aren’t particularly efficient but it holds for any weapon that has efficiency less than your shield flux/second

WRT kinetic efficiency it is worth noting that the AI is pretty good at keeping shields up or down depending on which weapons are hitting it. If you are primarily kinetic with missiles for HE you're going to need some way to keep the enemies shields up and overload it before you dump your HE missiles.

Edit: but yes firing those kinetics are shields is just fine for overfluxing (usually)

[Retry]

"Ion-something" is not enough. Full discharge of EMP Emmiter cant disable even small turrets (in test it took three discharges). Disabling at least Mediums with Ion Pulser is kinda moot. Tempests were getting fluxed by HMG fire sooner than they were able to disable them. You need to literally stay there doing absolutely nothing to get anything but Small mounts disabled. Downtime of small mounts even without Automatic Repair is 1-2 seconds. With AR it was brought online just as soon as it got disabled (message "disabled" was still on screen when "online" popped). Mediums had about a second of downtime (only a little longer than Smalls). However, as I said, for that to even proc I had to turn weapons off and wait. Something like that was with the engine. Time it took under barrge of mixed Heavy Blaster+Ion Pulser+several Ion Cannon fire to get flamed out was longer than to bring it back online.

I dont know if there is any way to boost EMP damage. Ordnance Expertise 3? Its only 15 percent anyway.

Also I was shocked that Reaper (without skills) dealt only 200 hull damage. Its not that I'm trying to recommend to tank Reapers. Just a fun fact.

I don't know too much about the EMP emitter ability so I won't talk about it.  I was more talking about weapons.

I did my own tests with Tempests against the Onslaught in the mission Sinking the Bismar (Bismar's Hullmods: Heavy Armor, Armored Weapon Mounts, Expanded Magazines).  Obviously this is sub-par for an Onslaught as it doesn't even have one of the range hullmods but it works fine for target practice.

Pre-test observations:

• The Bismar's 700-range rear-mounted Arbalest is almost identical to an ITU Onslaught + HMG
• The Bismar's armor is maximized due to the inclusion of both Armored Weapon Mounts & Heavy Armor
• The Bismar's weapon components are equivalently protected from EMP damage as if it had resistant flux conduits, since -50% damage vs EMP damage and +100% to weapon durability are mathematically identical

I did several tests with the missions to make sure the results were consistent, and used 1 Tempest w/ dual ion pulsers + reaper, and one with dual ion beams + advanced optics + ITU.  When doing the component disabling test, I would fire with my desired weapon system until the desired weapon was disabled or the engine flamed out, and cease firing, counting until the weapon or engine re-enabled.

Post-test empirical observations + data:

• Pulser Tempest indeed needed to get into range of the Arbalest, so it would certainly have been in range of an ITU Onslaught's rear HMGs.  However, due to weapon placements, the range the Pulser Tempest could shoot at and be shot at by the Onslaught were identical, and the Tempest needed at most 2 runs of a second or less to disable the engine, plus random weapons due to EMP arcing.  The range difference was small enough that it could be gotten around by using ion cannons, a high-tech DD instead of a frigate, or both.
• On the other hand, the rear mounts were far enough "inwards" that they couldn't be disabled "directly", only by EMP arcing.
• Tempest is more than fast enough to get around such an Onslaught while maintaining ~1300 distance between it.
• Opening up with a Reaper obliterates the armor at the rear, plus deals 2,000 hull damage (not 200).
• The Reaper opening by itself is sufficient to either destroy most of the engine components or cause an outright flameout.
• Pulser Tempest can solo the Bismar, despite my poor piloting.  But that's likely true of most Tempest builds that include a Reaper.
• Overall, though Beam Tempest couldn't solo Onslaught, it was way better at doing the actual disruption due to sheer range: It could/can stay at ~1300 range which is outside the threat radius of any of its ~800 range weapons (if DTC) or ~750 range weapons (if ITU), that plus mobility and sufficient distance to dodge shots makes threatening onslaughts with Ion Beams feasible starting from approximately its 2-oclock and 10-oclock positions.
• When on/near the rear of the Onslaught, Beam Tempest could disable the engines in ~2.5 ish seconds.  Continued firing of the lasers resulted in more than half of the Onslaught's armament being disabled at any given time due to random EMP arcing, after no more than 10 seconds of continued firing.
• The Onslaught's Engines required about the same time to repair regardless if the method used to disable them were Reapers, Ion Pulsers or Ion Beams.
• The Onslaught's Weaponry of any given size required about the same time to repair regardless if the method used to disable them were Ion Pulsers or Ion Beams.  Slot class (Missile/Ballistic/Energy) did not appear to influence results, only weapon size did.
• The Onslaught's Engine consistently required ~20 seconds to repair.
• The Onslaught's small weapons consistently required ~9-10 seconds to repair.
• The Onslaught's medium weapons consistently required ~10-12 seconds to repair.
• The Onslaught's large weapons consistently required ~18 seconds to repair.

A few conclusions:

Based on the Bismar's weapon's durability vs Ion Beam Tempest, that Tempest should still leave Reinforced Flux Conduit in a world of hurt with less than a dozen seconds of continuous fire to create a very exploitable opening.  Reinforced Flux Conduits then will not "solve" the problem of EMP boats if they're expected to be a significant threat and hullmods for increasing durability or repair speed of components will probably be required, given Onslaught's poor shield and shield arc.

Beam Support Tempest is much better at neutering Onslaughts than Ion Pulser Tempest, which has a bit short of a flux reserve.  In this case, a Pulse loadout might actually be better for the TT Brawler than Tempest due to being cheaper and far more durable to withstand parting shots from the Onslaught's two rear medium mounts from, for instance, HMGs.  High-tech DDs like the Shrike and Medusa with Ion Pulsers are more expensive alternatives to that which are fast enough to flank an Onslaught, but have the added advantage of being more useful against a wider variety of threats and generally durable generalists compared to a Brawler (they wouldn't care too much about rear HMGs given their higher flux dissipation, flux capacity, and extra bit of range.)

Without automated repair units, large weapons and engines took around 20 seconds to repair, assuming the components are not hit by any further EMP weapons.  Smalls and mediums took roughly 10 seconds.  Adding automated repair units certainly would help, but ~10 seconds for repairing engines and the large mounts would still be very exploitable.

Conclusions on the engine repair rate for cruisers and smaller, or even other Capital ships, cannot be concluded from this testing, naturally.

[Philder]

@Thaago
A Mining Pod wing is free. TPC is not. Considering TPC as free would be like consider any s/m/l weapon with 4/10/20 OP cost as free.

Although I don't know for sure, I'm reasonably certain that 10 OP per flight deck is way too much. The range of costs are from 0 to 18, with most being on the lower end. I suspect that, if flight decks even do grant OP, it'd be something like 6 or below. Consider the benefits that fighters give you and their associated OP costs, and relate that to weapon costs. I actually wouldn't be surprised if flight decks grant no OP, treating fighters more like hullmods. After all, a mining pod is rather insignificant, and gaining access to a nearly infinitely renewable supply of missiles, including torps, is easily on the level of the most expensive of hullmods.

Good point about the multiplicative bonus. I overlooked that.

Odyssey has many viable sources of damage, not just Plasma Cannon. I don't believe it should be considered a 'must have'. Also, I don't believe that all viable Odyssey builds require max vents. Odyssey isn't crippled by flux limits anywhere near as bad as Onslaught is. Dipping into your 'vent funds' on an Odyssey is a reasonable possibility. Also, the only defensive hullmod that Odyssey values on the same level as the many armor and hull and repair type hullmods that benefit the Onslaught, is Hardened Shields. Auxiliary Jets is also a high value hullmod for the Onslaught.

Devils advocate: As far as the OP costs of typical equips for each ship, Odyssey is more likely to have weapons (and wings) with higher than the given OP cost for their slot, while Onslaught is far more leniant with downgrading or even omiting slots.

In the end, I believe that OP is more-or-less balanced. In a literal sense the Onslaught does, in fact, have more OP than just about every ship in the game, but the value of that statement is near insignificant due to balance. I don't believe that the Onslaught is a terrible ship. I don't believe that other players shouldn't use them. I do believe, though, that many players overestimate it, just as many underestimate the Odyssey due to not knowing how to use it as well as just not finding it aesthetically pleasing enough.


@intrinsic_parity, and others
Heavy Blaster is a super-charged specialization. Its armor penetration and dps against shields, armor and hull is on the level of a large weapon, and it's not even at the bottom of that list. You pay for that, of course, with flux and a shorter range, but its turret speed is decent and accuracy is perfect. To help put things into perspective, let me add Heavy Blaster to my previous table of weapon stats.

Tachyon - 346 dps @ 750 dmg @ 462 f/s
115 dps (0.25) - 314 dps (0.68) - 1.5s - 6s  - 2250 dmg
HIL - 500 dps @ 250 dmg @ 500 f/s
250 dps (0.5) - 385 dps (0.77) -  -  -
Plasma - 750 dps @ 500 dmg @ 825 f/s
188 dps (0.23) - 653 dps (0.79) - 1s - 2s - 1500 dmg
Autopulse - 1500 dps @ 150 dmg @ 1250 f/s
225 dps (0.18) - 1000 dps (0.8 ) - 3.7s - 15s - 5550 dmg
' (sustained) - 375 dps @ 150 dmg @ 313 f/s
56 dps (0.18) - 250 dps (0.8 ) -  -  -
Paladin - 667 dps @ 500 dmg @ 1000 f/s
167 dps (0.17) - 579 dps (0.58) - 8.6s - 20s - 5778 dmg
' (sustained) - 267 dps @ 500 dmg @ 400 f/s
67 dps (0.17) - 231 dps (0.58) -  -  -

Heavy Blaster - 500 dps @ 500 dmg @ 720 f/s
125 dps (0.17) - 435 dps (0.6) - - -

Perhaps a better way of looking at the Heavy Blaster is to think of it as a burst weapon with unlimited charges, except those charges cost a little more flux. You don't use it to grind away in a flux war. You use it to blast your target into smithereens ASAP, hit and run, or strike from a blind-spot.

Regarding lack of non-missile kinetics, Onslaught vs Odyssey, or high tech vs low tech in general....it's not really an equitable situation. There are all kinds of factors that change the parameters of a fight, or a ship's overall effectiveness in battle.

'Winning the flux war' doesn't necessarily mean winning the battle. Ships (at least intelligently player-piloted ships) don't just stand toe-to-toe and exchange blows if they can help it. Being able to win a toe-to-toe flux war is an advantage, sure, but it's not the only path to a strong victory.

[Lucky33]

but it works fine for target practice

Nope. You forgot skills and addition of hullmods.

Ordnance Expertise 2 +50% weapon hitpoints

Damage Control 2 50% faster weapon repairs

Evasive Action 2 -50% damage to weapons and engine.

Armored Weapon Mounts + Resistant Flux Conduits. +100% weapon durability and -50% EMP damage.

Also worth noting:

Insulated Engine Assembly +100% engine durability, +10% hull and Automated Repair Unit -50% time to repair.

The only mod which deals directly with EMP damage is Resistant Flux Conduits and nobody using it for that but for venting boost.

This means that Onslaught in "full tank mode" is more than able to deal with EMP as it is.

Opening up with a Reaper obliterates the armor at the rear, plus deals 2,000 hull damage (not 200)

Same goes here.

Evasive Action 3 +50% more armor.

Impact Mitigation (1 and 2) +150 armor; -20% armor damage

Damage Control 3 -25% hull damage

A few conclusions

You need some disabler specialist ship worth of at least extra 8 deployment points (9,12) and not "Ion-something". Needles to say that at the same extra points you can get yourself a carrier with 2 fighter squadrons who will make life of said disabler specialists miserable and in the end it all end up with the Shade and its EMP Emitter which copes with the fighters and can be brought in range while ignoring Onslaught weapons altogether.

And be more thorough in your testing.

[Thaago]

@Philder
Could you explain how TPCs are not free?

From the perspective of "ships have OP budget based on mounts + bonus", they take away their OP because they are installed already - ie they have no impact on remaining OP, but are installed weapons. It would be like the Onslaught actually has 420 OP and 60 are always used.

From the perspective of raw OP: they cost 0 OP, so they are free.

Also... while the "OP budget from mounts + bonus" is how OP are initially estimated, I'm pretty sure they are then subject to further tweaking depending on how the ship performs (as we've seen many times from OP adjustments over the years). So it doesn't actually matter if TPC are "free" or not because the OP on an Onslaught are enough to make it work at the desired power levels.

[Goumindong]

TPCs are free. Ship OP balance design is not in the domain of the ship fitting maximization function

[Retry]

but it works fine for target practice

Nope. You forgot skills and addition of hullmods.

Okay.  I have tried to be polite.  I really have.

I've forgotten none of these. I clearly mentioned the hullmods of the Bismar and how they impact testing compared to an unmodded hull.  I am not interested in the impact of how any individual skills impact the results.  The impact can be derived from the base testing.  It's not profound to "discover" that equipping an officer with something that increases your weapon durability by 50% will increase the amount of time it takes for an ion beam to disable that weapon by 50%.  And we don't need a specific test to confirm it, unless we were specifically looking for how several different modifiers interacted with each other (ex: additive or multiplicative?), or if we wanted to see if it was working as intended or bugged in some way.

Especially since AI fleet ships, even Caps, are not guaranteed to have officers.  When they do, they're not guaranteed to have exactly the skill set you mentioned.  Even when you're the player assigning officers to ships, those won't necessarily have those skills.  The only one of the three you mentioned in that short list that I consider crucial for combat ships is Ordnance Expertise, and Lv.3 has a +15% damage which partially offsets the +50% weapon durability upgrade.  There's a limit on how many crew or officer skill points you can acquire, and there's enough good skills that those often don't see use unless the game itself is modded to allow for more skills to be assigned (I want Gunnery Implants, Power Grid Modulation, Combat Endurance, Helmsmanship, and Ordnance Expertise on most of my officer ships at minimum, and Defensive Systems and Target Analysis are way stronger contenders for the 6th and 7th skills than either Damage Control or Evasive Action.  Target Analysis increases component damage by 50%, by the way.).  Going with a base case (unmodded Tempest, unmodded Onslaught) and then applying modifiers as desired is far more experimentally sound then going straight to the case with modifiers when we don't even know how the base case behaves, specifically repair times for engines and weapons.

Of course, we should also mention the costs of building your Onslaught solely to laugh at EMPs.  Putting skills in Damage Control just to spite ion beams means you're not putting skills into something else that could actually assist in achieving the killing blow or chasing your opponents down to produce said blow.  Stacking AWM, RFC, and IEA hullmods is neat, but all of these cost OP, so you're sacrificing something to get that EMP resistance (not immunity).

You need some disabler specialist ship worth of at least extra 8 deployment points (9,12) and not "Ion-something". Needles to say that at the same extra points you can get yourself a carrier with 2 fighter squadrons who will make life of said disabler specialists miserable and in the end it all end up with the Shade and its EMP Emitter which copes with the fighters and can be brought in range while ignoring Onslaught weapons altogether.

Presumably ignoring that you can make a good cheap Pulser platform out of the Brawler (and Wolf, now that I think about it) and just jumping straight to Destroyers then?  The high fire rate, fast tracking, and DPS of Ion Pulsers + EMP is one of the better weapons against fighters, and in the original case discussed (Tempest), terminator drones maul fighters.

And be more thorough in your testing.

Thorough, eh?

Of the two of our tests, which one of us has laid out the steps made to reach a conclusion which is actually reproducible by members of the forum board?

Your test did not mention the overall situation (isolated 1v1 testing or anecdotes from a fleet-on-fleet brawl?), the target, the hullmods used by either side, the skills used by either side, or even the pilot ship in the case of the EMP emitter ship.  That's not a test.  That's hearsay.  You don't even list enough about your "testing" to criticize.  In fact, it's only because of your sketchy "200 hull damage from Reaper" claim that I bothered to check any of this out for myself.

Meanwhile, anybody on this forum can look at my claims, go do my test with my mentioned method, and either confirm (Yes Retry, I too got ~20 seconds for the Onslaught's engine repair time) or deny (No Retry, you goof, that's actually 1 second: You're using metric time!) my listed empirical data for repair time on engines or any of the weapon slots, as well as my more subjective, less number-based observations.

I'm sure my test wasn't perfect, but the fact that you, or anyone else, can even begin to nitpick my methods speaks to the gap between our procedures.

[Lucky33]

Okay.  I have tried to be polite.  I really have.

See.. It only takes one person disagreeing with you to make you lost it. Why you was pretending in the first place?

I clearly mentioned the hullmods of the Bismar

Yeah sure.

(Bismar's Hullmods: Heavy Armor, Armored Weapon Mounts, Expanded Magazines)

Resistant Flux Conduits in combination with Armored Weapon Mounts? No. Why would you even consider to do it!? It will make harder to disable target and why would you want that?

I am not interested in the impact of how any individual skills impact the results

Of course you are not. I am. Because they define the tactical situation. Your test has showed exactly that - tremendous difference between skilled and un-skilled ship.

Especially since AI fleet ships, even Caps, are not guaranteed to have officers.

We are talking about a ship for player here.

Of course, we should also mention the costs of building your Onslaught solely to laugh at EMPs

I already did it:

"The only mod which deals directly with EMP damage is Resistant Flux Conduits and nobody using it for that but for venting boost.

This means that Onslaught in "full tank mode" is more than able to deal with EMP as it is."

but all of these cost OP, so you're sacrificing something to get that EMP resistance (not immunity)

Not to get EMP resistance but for other use. You get EMP resistance as a bonus. But the target is the flux efficiency. You armor-tank to not waste your flux capacity on shield-tanking and to spend it on shooting things.

Presumably ignoring that you can make a good cheap Pulser platform out of the Brawler

Not ignoring. You just cant. You need TT variant of Brawler to mount Pulsers and it doesnt have Damper field. Without it Brawler cant survive duel against stern/backside batteries of Onslaught. Even the lowest tech, like Arbalest+Heavy Mortar. Wolf didnt even have a variant which allows it to deal with Onslaught. All it can do is to skim toward it get fluxed out and skim back or die.

Tempest was those 8 extra deployment point I've mentioned. But it was supposed to be armed with beams, not Pulsers.

Beam Support Tempest is much better at neutering Onslaughts than Ion Pulser Tempest

Anyway, changing loadout will not lower DP, and its just a torpedo fodder for Daggers, terminator drones or not.

Thorough, eh?

Yes. You tried to dissaprove my data by purposefully changing variables. Thats a bad move.

Your test did not mention the overall situation

You are supposed to ask for details if you are interested in this stuff.

[Philder]

@Thaago
To reiterate, if one declared that TPC is free, then any s/m/l weapon costing 4/10/20 would also be considered free, because in the end it would leave you with a net 0 change in additional OP. Any weapon with a cost of 5/11/21 when then be considered to have a cost of 1, 3/9/19 would have be considered a refund of 1, and etc... which is a terrible system to go by.

There is also no baseline for the total combination of mount sizes and count. A ship can be given more or less mounts of varying sizes. Ships with more than the average size and count of mounts aren't considered to have 'free' weapons. As pointed out with the Odyssey vs Onslaught, there's a huge disparity of number and sizes of mounts. If you equip a 4/10/20 OP weapon on all the mounts that the Onslaught has over the Odyssey, are those mounts now considered free?

I mentioned before that although the OP assignment is systemized, there are some ships which have had their OP adjusted. In addition, I also mentioned that some ships have either hullmods built in, and even equivalents of hullmods, like the Odyssey's extremely low shield upkeep.

Again, I believe that OP is, more-or-less, balanced. Clever combinations of outfits and even fleets can get you more out of what's available, just the same as substandard outfits and fleets can cause substandard outcomes, but it's more-or-less balanced. All the interlinking systems that Alex has designed into the game make for a complicated game of balancing this and that, but he's still managed quite well over time, and he definitely wouldn't leave such a monstreous a gap of overbalance in the Onslaught as many Onslaught fanatics claim.

[Draba]

The Apogee is a pretty good tank, but the measure of hard flux a ship can absorb while sitting still is not a good measure of its hardiness if it doesnt have to sit still. Also the Apogee cannot tank 15,000 damage while firing a plasma cannon. It has 700 base dissipation and 420 base shield cost. At max vents this is 600 or 800 dissipation if it has stabalized shields. Plasma costs 850. Affording the OP on this type of fit is very difficutlt for an Apogee while an Odyssey will have OP to spare for caps

Let's say you don't have the (mandatory)loadout design and the officer flux skill: Apogee runs a 60 flux deficit, Odyssey 350.
You need hardened shields AND 25 caps just to break even on hard flux capacity. Neither are obvious choices on Odyssey(hardened shields is rarely bad though).

Topic was on how fast an Odyssey kills tanky cruisers, in this specific scenario hard flux capacity is the best measure of hardiness.
For raw damage output Odyssey dancing doesn't add anything, we are already playing in a vacuum where it doesn't get shot at anyway.
Again, I don't actually think the number comparisons are important. Just illustrations.

@Draba
Interesting point about HMGs on Onslaughts - I've been using the 'ring of dual flaks' for the frontal mediums in order to no sell missiles and fighters. Do you find that having an HMG or two leaves you with enough area defense?

2-3 HMGs do enough raw damage to murder missiles/fighters(they actually feel better against sparks).
Obviously not as strong, but serviceable even without extra vulcans/flaks in front and you get a brutal punch against shields.
You still get the vulcans/flak in non-frontal slots(I mostly use single flak). Could even go for flak/devastators in the side Ls with the awkward arcs.

Weapons with longer ranges are more useful in most situations but if I'm playing an onslaught I want to see some action.
Railguns and heavy needlers/heavy autocannons/hellbore/TPCs for pinging at range, HMGs and reapers to actually murder.

Dumping damage into shields with kinetics and following up with zero flux HE missiles is a very effective strategy (annihilators on onslaught and dominator are incredible for this).

This sums the gist up very well.
In general shields are the most significant defense in almost every case, having access to hard kinetics is a massive advantage that can overcome bad dissipation.

If you're in a situation where the enemy is firing back at you then every flux you spend over dissipation reduces your ability to win the fight.

You have 10K cap, 600 dissipation and 1.5 F/D weapons. Enemies are shooting at you for 1.5K damage a sec.
Which case is better, dumping 6K flux at a 4K HP enemy in a second or shooting it for 10 seconds?

Kinda artificial, much more important points:
You are shooting at a cruiser but it retreats/is saved with half hull, you still have 80% of your flux pool.
In the meantime a 130 DP remnant fleet with a radiant was shooting at 105 DP of your ships.
Did you win?

You are chasing remnant beam frigates with skimmer to make sure you can shoot up their cruisers unmolested.
In the meantime a ~140 DP remnant fleet with a radiant is shooting at 105 DP of your ships.
Is that a win?

We can extend this to the Harbinger, using its own hard flux in order to reduce the cooldown on its reapers while draining its peak time significantly. Doing this is dangerous because you are susceptible to many targets shooting at you. You need your capacity in order to make bombing runs. But even then i was ignoring the cooldown on the reapers when considering its "dps" because the point was not "the harbinger is bad" but that the amount of DPS you do is hard limited by the amount of damage you can do and the Harbinger has a hard limited amount of damage. If you retreat and bring another you have to consider the time you spend flying to/from the edge of the map back to the battle. If you have to assign other ships to kill small ships you have to avoid them while maneuvering to kill the larger ones. If you run out of peak time or reapers then damage stops while seconds keep ticking away. The Odyssey has no such limitations.

Just let the Harbinger go
You use hard flux to phase and get into position, fire reapers, vent, start again. Most of the reaper reloading is done while you'd be cloaked anyway.
Peak time doesn't really matter, you'll comfortably use up everything before it's over.
The system+ammo it has equals a fkton of Odyssey time, even with your method of not counting in flying around and taking damage.
Harbinger is considered way over the top for a good reason.

@Thaago
To reiterate, if one declared that TPC is free, then any s/m/l weapon costing 4/10/20 would also be considered free, because in the end it would leave you with a net 0 change in additional OP.

There are just no words for how dumb this is.
Again: you have a ship with Onslaught stats, but 200 L ballistic slots and only 2000 OP. Does it beat the Odyssey despite the massive OP handicap?

as many Onslaught fanatics claim.

I do believe, though, that many players overestimate it, just as many underestimate the Odyssey due to not knowing how to use it as well as just not finding it aesthetically pleasing enough.

Don't have to like a ship to know what it's good at(for me Onslaught is the very bottom of the preference list).
The Odyssey is a more useful ship for most purposes, didn't see many contests there.
As a reminder, you were the one repeatedly corrected on the basic mechanics.