Hello again!
I've actually followed a Storyteller quest and managed to recover a (surprisingly) pristine, Spec Ops Atome Battlecarrier so I brought it back to my homeworld for "Research Purposes".
First off, I am playing a semi-hardcore campaign with no commander skills improving in-combat fleet capability. The only two I permitted myself using are level 1 coordinated manouvers (was actually a mistake) and level 1 electronic warfare since I've got mod faction bringing in something ridiculous like 50% ECM rating and I'd rather have my fleet at least combat it a little.
Furthermore, I limited myself to only level 2 of Loadout Design, so none of that juicy extra OP for me.
I'm also not using any Lieutenants and the enemy is limited to 1 level 0 officer so the combat performance should almost as level as it can get.
Back to the BO Atome. I've looked over the stat board and noticed the BO variant seems to just be adding extra Hull Integrity, wich I can only assume it's a placeholder for what you come up with in the future.
Spoiler
I can give some ideas however. More armor/better flux capacity has been done before, so I would go with a different route: Improved Accelleration, top speed, a tiny bit more ECM rating and reduced sensor signature on the overworld would fit an elite hit group just fine methinks
Onto the retrofitting. I immediately noticed it's rather tight on Ordinance points for a 45FP Battlecarrier. A XIV Legion gets 270 while this chonker barely squeaks above that at 290 and that's more than fine. This ship already comes with an amazing 0.7 flux to damage shield and has a much, much more useful special ability than anything in that FP range.
Considering the rather tight OP, I decided to forgo installing Hardened Shields (did not really need it anyway, but It would've been nice) and limited myself to just installing Shield Conversion:Front since 600 flux sec for the shield simply had to go, added to the fact that shield arc was way too narrow for my liking.
Also installing stabilized shields is a pitfall many high tech players use but in this case stabilized shields does not do anything since it costs 15 OP and reduces shield upkeep by 150 OP, meaning you get the same results in spending those 15 OP in Vents, with the difference the ship will vent faster while the shield is not up or is venting.
Now, weapon loadouts. I'm not a fan of giving a Battlecarrier weapons revolving around medium to close ranged combat since there's still half a carrier behind those weapon mounts, so I went on the opposite route instead. I did some experimentation and quickly found out the ship really can't support crazy large energy weapons like High Intensity Lasers or Tach Lances, so I installed a pair of Scorpius LRM systems.
I quickly went around the rest of the ship and noticed that while there are two hybrid slots at the front everything else is energy mounts plus one medium missile slot to the right side, so I just went the laser way. I installed 5 Medium Combat Lasers and 10 Tactical Lasers plus Integrated Targeting Unit, Integrated Point Defence AI and Advanced Turret Gyros to not only give the Battlecarrier amazing, long range PD capabilities but also a very punishing, constant damage array of lasers working off the Hard Flux those two Scorpius LRM systems generate. You could argue Graviton beams would be a better candidate but they're not nreakt as good PD weapons and I wanted this carrier to both be an amazing anti fighter tool and very dangerous to ships with their shields disabled.
The only thing remaining is the Fighter complement and with any respectable carrier also comes Expanded Deck Crew so I plopped that in. I personally find various degrees of combat carriers ranging from the Legion to the Odissey to work a lot better with air superiority fighters rather than bombers or support fighters as the increased staying power will hold enemies off the main ship a lot better, wich is vital for a unit that usually sits at the frontline and is vulnerable to flanking by smaller, faster ships. My fighter of choice ended up being the Broadsword (so much for creativity) as it also has the bonus effect of dealing kinetic damage, making the Atome's laser array that much more lethal!
I could've installed some rather questionable Hullmods like unstable injector or ECM but decided to go simple for once in my life and invested all the 39 remaining Ordinance Point into vents. I also committed sin and left that side missile mount completely empty since anything I could put there felt like a waste. A medium version of the Scorpius LRM would've been swell but I don't think there is one yet
wink wink.
I wanted the ship to also use its medium combat lasers as PD so I grouped all sorts of lasers togheder, with the only other weapon group occupied by the (obviously linked) LRMs.
The end result is an extremely resilient and PD heavy ship that will out-kite mostly anything in the sector, especially effective against small ships but also more than capable of overwhelming big targets overtime. I can only imagi e this being even more of a nightmare in the center of an AI fleet and with a heavy ECM rating supporting it.
The end result beats the Simulation versions of
1)Atome
2)Electras/Anthyma/Lepton all coming at it togheder, takes a while especially due to the
Suuuucc3)Gauss/Hellbore, Piranha Legion
4)Gauss, Annihilator rocket Onslaught
5)Astral
6)Vendetta (missile based, 42FP Hegemony mod capital)
7)Victory (!) (55 FP midline mod capital) but it takes a loong time
8)Double Aurora, both with sabot MRMs
9)Double gauss Conquest. Conquest can't push in cause fighters and Atome can't pressure it all too well due to the Broadside Wonder being too mobile. Conquest will eventually get eaten alive by fighters after a long while. The Atome actually snipes the Hurricane MIRVs even before they split into their submunitions. Feelsgoodman.
10)All COP frigades (minus Quantum) plus Proteus (51FP total). Really shows how brutal it is against smaller ships
11)4 Tach Lance Paragon. I don't have anything smart to say about this one, just that most simulator variants of ships seem to suck a.lot of ass, no offense to anyone involved.
It works best with an aggressive officer as it will keep the pressure on and the ship is mobile enough to effectively disengage whenever it's in danger. You could probably switch the Broadswords for Longbows but as I said before the increased presence of actual fighter craft helps it a lot more. Don't know if high tech actually has fighters dealing kinetic damage but I'd go for those if there were
wink wink. You could add this to the faction variants no problem, I guess slapping a Salamander on that naked medium missile slot would at least slightly nerf it's pressure capabilities.
What else can I add... hmmm... I don't think it's all that overperforming despite the obviously overwhelmingly positive results it has. It can kill a lot of stuff by itself but it's going to take a long, long time to do it, especially if its of comparable size. I have not experimented all that much with shorter range variants but I don't think they come anywhere close to the same level of performance reliability this laser version achieves across most types of targets. It probably really struggles against [Redacted] since they're both hypermobile and have amazing flux stats and shield damage ratios.
The only small nitpick I have are the side/back small energy weapon arcs. All those 180 degree weapon arcs feel rely out of place on such a sinuous hull. I hope you did not get a brain aneurism at the end of this text wall of a reply, I'm sorry if you did. Mod onwards my friend!
Edit: I wrote this on the phone so I could not include any screenshots. I am home now however so here's my Atome loadout:
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Topic: [0.9.1a] Concordance of Protection Syndicate (COPS) v.2.0b (Read 87699 times)