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[AxleMC131]

For a beginner player, I STRONGLY recommend Hammerhead over Sunder. The Sunder is a "glass cannon", if you know what that means: it can provide monstrous firepower, but it is much more situational and tricky to play well, with more danger if you mess up and not a lot of ways to get out of a sticky situation.

The Hammerhead, by comparison, is IMHO the best ship for a pilot-in-training to learn in. Not only is it the ship you're taught to fly in the main menu tutorials, it has a balanced mix of armour and shielding, speed and guns, with good loadout flexibility and a foolproof "press F to profit" ship system. It's such a ship that is nearly impossible to build wrong - almost anything works on it to some extent, and it forgives mistakes.

Even if we're not talking a piloted ship but just an AI fleet member, the Sunder requires more careful loadout design and in-combat management than the Hammerhead. Sunders rely on their shields, but that same flux pool is what drives their weapons to insane levels, and as such a Sunder requires a careful balance between fighting and staying back, which (for the AI) generally demands a well thought-out loadout.

As an experienced player, I enjoy both the Hammerhead and Sunder, and in both of them I see flaws and benefits, and places where they work well and not so well. In fact the "Hammerhead/Sunder rivalry" is quite interesting to me. Regardless, for this situation where you're still learning, I suggest the Hammerhead hands-down as something that's really hard to go wrong with.

[Broetchenholer]

The thing is, i had actually used the Simulator to see if the new ship (Sunder) would be an upgrade or if i should stick to a second known Hammerhead. That got a little offtrack by finding out that both ships are, if undergeared, quite bad against the fully stacked Simulator versions. If the player in the cockpit is inexperienced or simply bad, like me, the ships seem to behave very badly and we get to the point where i was, that both ships get murdered by the other. Being then told to just use a SO design is somewhat helpful because it certainly enables me to kill the Sunder in Simulation. It also shows me a different way to build, but it does not help me in actually getting better at the game. In the end, i have not seen a single Sunder on the campaignmap deployed against me so far. The ships i am facing are low tech frigates and destroyers which are either much faster or highly armored. And the tactics employed against the Sunder suddenly make no sense anymore. I ended up buying the Sunder the last time i loaded, equipped it with the Plasma cannon and 2 Railguns + 2 Sabots and started to make it work. In regards to the last post, yes, the Sunder is not the immediate pick for a rookie, but it's, in my opinion, better against the enemies yióu face in the early stage of the game. You also learn to position better because you are dead if you don't.

Anyway, thanks for all the tips, i get better

[Lucky33]

THe worst thing about SO builds and new players is that they are prone to running out of peak performance time and getting to zero CR. This makes deployment costs on par with the capitals.

[Plantissue]

Not that I don't beleive you, but if you are going to make a video, you should make the right conditions, otherwise it looks like you are deliberately misrepresenting.

[Broetchenholer]

Quick two questions to not open a new thread here.

A) Is it desired behaviour that autofire weapons will not shoot despite being in range by the 15% longer range through gunnery? It is very annoying to me, that i can drive up flux by shooting an enemies shield with Railguns but when they should almost fail and i swith to a solis cannon to deal damage, the railgun stops until i am much closer range.

B) Bought myself a Vanguard and gave it into the hands of an officer. Equipped it with a hellbore and 2 Sabot MRMs and some more stuff, at work right now and can't really look. I noticed yesterday that in battle it it doing terrible. It does zero damage, or 4% with starship legends. Watching it a little, it seemed like it is always hanging back, never getting into range. Fighting quite a bit against destroyer heavy pirate fleets i don't understand how this thing is not getting shots in. Then i saw that it's officer is timid. Could it be that the officer is desperately trying to not get into fights with anything it's size, while being too slow to fight frigates? Should slow ships be out of hands of the AI at all times because they fly with shields too much?

[Plantissue]

It's because the officer is Timid. Timid officers try to avoid damage from non-missile weapons. Hover your mouse over the portrait in the fleet screen and there should be a description. I don't have access right now, so perhaps you can tell us what the description says.

It should still be able to enter combat vs Destroyers, assuming that a Vanguard is a destroyer itself as you've equipped it with Hellbore Cannon which is a relatively long range weapon. Remove the range reduction hullmods like Safety Overrides or Unstable injector if you have them, or add Integrated Targeting Unit and it should outrange any other detroyer.

[Broetchenholer]

I guess i should have a look on my officer traits next time i hire them then. Timid should not affect officers ability to effectively use carriers, right? That's the place for them then i guess.

[intrinsic_parity]

A) Is it desired behaviour that autofire weapons will not shoot despite being in range by the 15% longer range through gunnery? It is very annoying to me, that i can drive up flux by shooting an enemies shield with Railguns but when they should almost fail and i swith to a solis cannon to deal damage, the railgun stops until i am much closer range.

Autofire always fires if you are in range and have enough spare flux capacity. It seems likely to me that you were high on flux and the railgun stopped firing to avoid overloading you. If the rail guns just don't fire while you are in range and have plenty of capacity, then you may have found a bug of some sort. Do you have a clip of this behavior? I've personally never seen it.

[Broetchenholer]

Not for me, i am trying a Praetorian Class and have seen it there. Having 2 Rail guns on 3 and autofire, a Solis Cannon and a Sagittarius AC on 1. I am kiting a Hammerhead backwards and as long as i am not further away then this:



the autofire engages the target. if i move away, it stops. The range of the Railgun is muuuch higher, even without my piloting perk.



I would like it to keep firing here, it does not.

https://imgur.com/RXaBTpz

If this is unintended, i will post it as a bug.

[intrinsic_parity]

Pretorian is an Interstellar Imperium ship right? Probably some bug with the mod ships/systems/hull mods. I would post in the mod thread first.

[AxleMC131]

Nah, it's more likely you're just at the utter edge of the range limit. Projectile weapons have a fade when they reach max range, so they can still hit a target beyond maximum range (though the damage is reduced and it's only soft flux to shields). However, the autofire AI won't do this, it has to be properly within the indicated range band to keep firing.

Solution? Move like three inches forwards.

[Broetchenholer]

This makes sense and explains some of the problems i had started this topic for. If kiting the enemy while being in fade-out range results in lowered damage to shields and no hard flux, it gives the impression of the ship being very weak as the shields barely take damage.

[Broetchenholer]

Quick question for nexerelin, why am i suddenly at -55 and hostile to Sylphon and Tri Tachyon? I did nothing to enrage them except maybe having contraband once or twice. I am independent with no commision, i have not build any colonies. I was salvaging and killing bounties mainly and suddenly both factions were hostile. I am not playing on starfarer mode. I have no clue why they would ever see me as hostile. Any possible explanations?

[Megas]

This makes sense and explains some of the problems i had started this topic for. If kiting the enemy while being in fade-out range results in lowered damage to shields and no hard flux, it gives the impression of the ship being very weak as the shields barely take damage.

In earlier releases when fading out attacks hit for hard flux, players could hover within this fade-out range and chip enemies' shields until they cap then player can pound on a vulnerable ship.

It was one of the exploits that enabled player to solo ships, maybe fleets, in pre-0.8a releases.

[Plantissue]

Quick question for nexerelin, why am i suddenly at -55 and hostile to Sylphon and Tri Tachyon? I did nothing to enrage them except maybe having contraband once or twice. I am independent with no commision, i have not build any colonies. I was salvaging and killing bounties mainly and suddenly both factions were hostile. I am not playing on starfarer mode. I have no clue why they would ever see me as hostile. Any possible explanations?

Why don't you post in the threads for them? That way the people who are best placed to help you can see it.