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[Thaago]

I was using some support doctrine enforcers with a hangar as backup ships for a pure low tech run, and they did ok. Not spectacular, and the fact that so many of the strong new ships are perfectly designed to kill destroyers makes it tough to use them endgame.

My biggest advice: using HVD on them is rough! Shorter ranged but higher efficiency weapons make them much more dangerous, at least for my use of them as line-filling/escort ships. Heavy Needlers let them burst up the flux of ships, opening them up to a torpedo/breach strike. They have burn drive for a reason: crank up the faction aggression and let them burn into range - ordos will just come to them anyways.

This also frees up weapon slots to include some high efficiency PD, like a vulcan or two. 2 Heavy needlers (alternating weapon group) + a vulcan is 34 DP instead of 39 for 3 HVDs, provides 'light' point defense for shooting down the occasional missile or torpedo, and gives 500 kinetic DPS for 400 flux instead of 414 dps for 525 flux. Even using a flak can be good - their superior reach lets neighboring enforcers defend each other a bit better, and its still a net savings of OP over HVDs.

[CapnHector]

It's a ship you really don't want to send close to the enemy though when it has bad shields, can't win the flux war, is unable to retreat and has defensive stats equal to a Colossus Mk. II (300 more armor though). Not to mention literally all Remnant ships (including Apex with Elite Helmsmanship) can just retreat from it if they feel threatened if it doesn't keep burning in. That's why you pay for the +43% range with HVD.

[TheLaughingDead]

Mind if I share a build in video form?

That is pretty cool. You lost a lot of crew/ships, but it looks like the crew was a Talon issue and the ships were mostly from Radiants. Against the speed and firepower of a teleporting capital ship, I can't imagine a destroyer monofleet making it out without losses. Normally I try and build my low-tech Enforcers/cruisers/capitals with a more armour-oriented defense, but it makes sense that an endurance fight against 3+ Ordos will necessitate more shield strats. The lack of PD also demands shields over armour. Actually, I've noticed all of your ship builds in multi-ordo fights use Hardened Shields over Heavy Armour. Have you found it to be useful anywhere?

...so can't be all bad (unless you use some of those mounts for flak I guess, then you get bad survivability and no firepower instead of just bad survivability).

I am guilty as charged...

...having said that knowing what I do now, it might actually be optimal to put 1 Vulcan so you can link 4 mediums with it to force true autofire and venting on the AI though.

I have not heard of this trick. Does linking regular guns with PD force them to always fire, even at high flux? That could be super useful to overcome some AI hesitancy I run into.

medusa

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I think medusas have a shot at 3 ordos with no losses. This build served me pretty well so maybe with a little tweaking it could pull it off. You probably wouldn't even need hardened subsystems because they're more than fast enough to retreat mid-battle.

Hey, I used a very similar build a little while back! Worked pretty well, though I built it with S-modded Expanded Magazines and focused on caps; because it teleports, it can move in, dump its charges, and then usually get away for a vent/to drop shields.
My freaky offshoot evolution (sidevolution?) was a dual Ion Pulser build, with 2x Light Needlers, 2x Ion Pulsers, 2x Antimatter Blasters (!), and a Burst PD on the back. It didn't have ITU because it couldn't afford it and the Ion + Antimatter didn't benefit that much. Massive alpha, though the build was incredibly overfluxed (like the entire flux bar would top off with soft flux) but I think with some tweaks I could make it work. For example, I built in Hardened Subsystems and Stabilized Shields (the latter in particular I was playing around with) and both of those could probably be subbed for the caps/vents hullmods and/or shield buffs.
In the end though, I found that the Medusa officer needed to make that work could also serve on an Odyssey and really wreck face from that ship. I'll have to go back to the Medusa and play around with it some more


In general, lots of interesting things to think about in this thread. I'm going to go for an all destroyer fleet and see how it does. I'm tempted to start with a line-battle type fleet, thinking some mix of Enforcers, Sunders, Manticores, Hammerheads, SO Shrikes for point cap perhaps. Thinking the Sunders are a simple beam artillery build, Manticores fit a Mark IX (or Gauss with officer) and Breaches/Harpoons as artillery as well, but what about Hammerheads? The classic Heavy Mortar/Railgun combo puts them pretty close to the enemy lines compared to the Manti/Sunder builds. Dual HVD with Warthogs perhaps... Any build recommendations that make them pull their DP, or ought I sub them for more Enforcers?
(how will I even fit my fleet with all these ships lol)

PS: While writing this post, there have been 3+ new messages. I apologize for not addressing them!

[CapnHector]

Mind if I share a build in video form?

That is pretty cool. You lost a lot of crew/ships, but it looks like the crew was a Talon issue and the ships were mostly from Radiants. Against the speed and firepower of a teleporting capital ship, I can't imagine a destroyer monofleet making it out without losses. Normally I try and build my low-tech Enforcers/cruisers/capitals with a more armour-oriented defense, but it makes sense that an endurance fight against 3+ Ordos will necessitate more shield strats. The lack of PD also demands shields over armour. Actually, I've noticed all of your ship builds in multi-ordo fights use Hardened Shields over Heavy Armour. Have you found it to be useful anywhere?

Yes, the

Venture Mk. II Ordo farming fleet

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featured Heavy Armor on all ships. The main thing is it is really expensive and I do not think it would make the Enforcers significantly more survivable, 300 armor is easily taken care of, at least the Hardened Shields gives 1916 extra damage the loadout can tank in theory and ideally repeatably and also gives -EMP damage from beams. On the other hand capitals can't armor tank in these multi-Ordo challenge fights as it's just too much damage for one ship. So it generally doesn't make it in as of .96 as the S-mod penalty is really bad too.

[Thaago]

It's a ship you really don't want to send close to the enemy though when it has bad shields, can't win the flux war, is unable to retreat and has defensive stats equal to a Colossus Mk. II (300 more armor though). Not to mention literally all Remnant ships (including Apex with Elite Helmsmanship) can just retreat from it if they feel threatened if it doesn't keep burning in. That's why you pay for the +43% range with HVD.

Huh, I consider it the exact opposite: It wants to be as close to the enemy as possible! It has better armor/hp than anything else for its DP except maybe ventures (and 990 vs 600 armor is, uhh, a large difference in terms of CMII), can win flux wars both with numbers and also with using better guns, and has the missile power to burst down enemies. Because its base capacity is so low, investing points into capacity is very helpful - I try to get at least 15 on any build (this is easier for me as I don't take the tech skill to get more vents in a normal playthrough, as I don't consider it worth it over combat skills except for when I'm doing high tech frigate packs).

With HVD, a build isn't just paying for 43% more range: it's paying for 45% less damage per mount and 59% more flux per damage. In terms of winning the flux war, it is a very poor gun. In your video there are many times when the enemy are very close anyways, but the Enforcers are firing low efficiency guns vs shield.

[Jang]

You could use Support Doctrine + Derelict Operations to make destroyers work for endgame. Here's 1st try with post-nerf Drover spam, managed to clear 1600 DP with just a few losses before CR caught up with me:

Spoiler

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[CapnHector]

You could use Support Doctrine + Derelict Operations to make destroyers work for endgame. Here's 1st try with post-nerf Drover spam, managed to clear 1600 DP with just a few losses before CR caught up with me:

Spoiler

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Now that seems like a strong destroyer fleet. What's the loadout?

[Jang]

Bit reluctant to share the loadout because I just threw it together without testing, but it was 30 of these lil guys:

Spoiler

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This isn't necessarily the direction I'd take to optimize it but it did work pretty well. In hindsight I would drop at least one Drover for some frigates because I didn't get to deploy all my ships until they started dying at the end lol

[Draba]

It's a ship you really don't want to send close to the enemy though when it has bad shields, can't win the flux war, is unable to retreat and has defensive stats equal to a Colossus Mk. II (300 more armor though). Not to mention literally all Remnant ships (including Apex with Elite Helmsmanship) can just retreat from it if they feel threatened if it doesn't keep burning in. That's why you pay for the +43% range with HVD.

Part of not being that tough is spending tons of OP on HVD/mauler though (although heavy mortar might not be a good enough alternative to mauler).
Enforcer is a pretty small target, can kinda-sorta hide in swarms and doesn't instantly die on hull hits so extra capacity goes a long way.
Also think missile autoloader is a complete waste, building almost literally anything else in should help more IMO.

[CapnHector]

How would you build it to take out 3 Ordos? I'd (genuinely) like to see a better Enforcer build, it is a fun ship in all its brutal glory

Before settling on this I tried 5 Railgun 4 Breach which was my goto last version and 4 Railgun 1 Light AG 4 Breach, both with BRF, but they did not seem to work. Memory is a little fuzzy already whether it was dying or killing speed.

Missile Autoloader is just to make the Hammers last. With it they are 10-20% of the unofficered ships' damage so seems good, and they are needed to burst big Remnant ships. Would love to put in 4x Hammer instead but that doesn't actually make them last longer since the AI will fire 4 at a time.

Bit reluctant to share the loadout because I just threw it together without testing, but it was 30 of these lil guys:

Spoiler

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This isn't necessarily the direction I'd take to optimize it but it did work pretty well. In hindsight I would drop at least one Drover for some frigates because I didn't get to deploy all my ships until they started dying at the end lol

It's definitely a find, thanks for sharing! Since you don't appear to even use the missiles for damage on the Drover, I wonder if Condors might be workable too? You could run them without DO due to only being 8 OP a piece with SD.

[Draba]

How would you build it to take out 3 Ordos? I'd (genuinely) like to see a better Enforcer build, it is a fun ship in all its brutal glory

Dunno and IMO it's not worth bothering, Enforcer is just a really bad ship for something like this.
Can't get botb+hull restoration+the important tech/leadership skill together, so will have botb+support doctrine and can't fill to 240 DP without going over the 30 ship limit.
Padding with converted hangars looks terrible to me: talons suck hard and will kill crew in the hundreds, wasp spam isn't what's needed here, broadswords add 2 DP and still drop like flies.

If you want destroyer monofleets go hammerhead, 90 speed and 0.8 shields, ammo feeder, better flux, the higher DP just means skipping hangars.
Enforcer without fully utilising its armor/hull/S missiles isn't that hot.

Overall agreed with the first post, destroyers are not worth using later on. Frigates can cap and fight flankers, cruisers fight everything, Falcon are there for a compromise between the 2.
After early game destroyers weren't that good to begin with, and this version Nova was added and converted hangar cheese fixed.
LP Manticore is the exception, +if you squint hard enough Sunder might be worth trying but terribad shields and destroyer ITU make sure that it dies a lot even with beams.