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[Arcagnello]

Increasing fleet size limits to 50 for both me and the enemy and maximum number of enemy officers to 20 looked like a really fun and egaging idea back when I started this Iron Mode Starfarer campaign, I guess this is the first time I'm actually regretting it.

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The bloody special bounty can't even fit in the screen!

First Engagement (most losses on both sides, fighting at 140FP when the enemy gets 260 is not fun)

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Second Engagement (more or less run them over, lost more ships trying to kill that bloody Za Warudo wannabe Great Houses Cruiser)

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Third Engagement (Just the stupid cruiser left and two surviving phase ships out of CR)

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Fourth Engagement (finally nailed the stupid thing. I actually had to deploy my mining frigades to trick its AI into not immediately retreating. And I OBVIOUSLY did not recover it)

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Battle Results and honorable losses(wished I could've broken that 1000% damage dealt treshold with the meme flagship, but I guess dealing 900% damage in a ship with almost 36.000 hullpoints is good enough  )

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This was complete masochism. If anyone wants to engage in ludicrous battles like these that take 3 back-to-back engagements to finally get the enemy to retreat then go ahead. I personally suggest to play with mostly mobile ships so that you can inflict your 100FP worth of losses to the enemy while it has the numerical advantage, then full retreat and re-engage. Refusing to back down and keep retreating and deploying ships as their CR went into the ground like I did was a mistake.

[Nafensoriel]

I run 60/60 1000 FP battles.
I once got face****ed by what felt like 40 pirate carriers and 20 atlasMk2s. Normally a who cares type fight.. except... oh gods so many fighters.

It's a good kind of masochisms.

[SaberCherry]

Increasing fleet size limits to 50 for both me and the enemy

That looks like more than 50.  Did you mean 500?

Also the scads of frigates and dearth of capitals/cruisers lends credence to someone's claim that increasing enemy fleet size can reduce difficulty by making the AI spread a similar amount of DP across more hulls.  Unless those things at the top that look kind of like enforcers are actually capitals.  Odd that there are virtually no D-mods though in presumably a pirate fleet.

[Arcagnello]

Increasing fleet size limits to 50 for both me and the enemy

That looks like more than 50.  Did you mean 500?

Also the scads of frigates and dearth of capitals/cruisers lends credence to someone's claim that increasing enemy fleet size can reduce difficulty by making the AI spread a similar amount of DP across more hulls.  Unless those things at the top that look kind of like enforcers are actually capitals.  Odd that there are virtually no D-mods though in presumably a pirate fleet.

You're right actually, the fleet size there is above 50. I guess Special Bounties like these expect you to have a maxed out fleet and still force you to battle uphill.

Edit:I actually counted how many there were and it's 128 combat ships, totaling around 1000 fleet points while my fleet is a fourth utility ships and is 400FP. You can see this in the battle results screenshots.

I am actually using the same spread when it comes to ships. I got my supercapital that's 50 FP, two battle cruisers worth 40FP, three special cruisers worth around 30FP each, 2 smaller cruisers worth 24, 4 gryphons worth 20, 4 Rukh carriers worth 20 FP and 6 missile destroyers worth 9FP. I never liked capital spam and like to be able to mix and match my ships to meet different types of enemies.

As for the enemy fleet: that Kassadari cruiser is worth 70FP. It might look like a lot until you realize it's always playing at 110% game speed (130% when below 30% health) and its special ability briefly makes it to 20 times faster than real time. It's literally a ship version of Dio's "The World" as it will disappear from the spot it's currently in only to then reappear some 300-400 units somewhere else.

The pair of ships right behind it are Run Scaith Dreadnoughts: 55 FP super sized crosses between an onslaught and a Legion belonging to the Legio Infernalis, with something like 4 frontal facing large mounts (plus 3 other large mounts on each side and rear) and 4 fighter bays. Quite potent, effective but most important of all, INTIMIDATING!

The round boys after those are a Legio Infernalis conversion of the Liberator. It's the thing that actuay inflicted most losses to my fleet since it's quite deadly. It's worth around 24-22 FP but only carries two missile mounts, 5 small ballistics and a spinal, built in large mount. What makes it incredibly dangerous is it's special ability turning it into a midget version of a Dominator on cocaine as it boosts towards you with increased armor/mass and handling for like 5 seconds. It will ram the target ship, shoot that spinal mount, overload any shield that is still up, either get behind or punt the target back and then will fire its missiles, wich are usually harpoons.

I sorta felt lucky since my capital/battlecruisers/cruisers have no shield so they were wasting their missiles from medium range, and then ramming my bigger ships only resulted in my units getting hilariously punted backwards. I must have had my Caliph reared and T-boned more than half a dozen times

The remaining ships are mostly vanilla. There was a time in the battle when all the 8FP pirate phase ships came out and I got a good number of Reaper torpedoes almost shot up my capital's bum. Luckily some of my carriers and long range missile ships were still online and made their life a living hell.

Edit 2: Here's a pic of spooky spooky Run Scaith

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[Arcagnello]

Accidentally quoted my own comment instead of editing. 

[Arcagnello]

I run 60/60 1000 FP battles.
I once got face****ed by what felt like 40 pirate carriers and 20 atlasMk2s. Normally a who cares type fight.. except... oh gods so many fighters.

It's a good kind of masochisms.

Long range AA, Integrated Targeting Unit, Dedicated Point Defence AI and (if your ships have decent shield ratios and arcs) Hardened shields will be your best friends in that scenario. Also using defensive fighter wings on your carriers will do wonders in repelling the initial waves.

I find most carrier/missile focused fleets running out of steam after the first two fighter waves wash off as their fighters can't screen for their ordnance anymore and there is nothing holding your fleet back.

That said, my Prophet actually took most of the damage it received from Atlas Mk.IIs and their HE cannons, combined with either Double Locust Swarm or Squall keeping my point defence very busy. They did perish in seconds when either my flagship, my assault Corvettes or my sea of missiles focused them down but that bloody fleet was so full of very fast cruisers and frigades it really made aggressively pushing and dealing with the Atlas first a death sentence.

There was one moment in the battle when I pushed my Prophet halfway thru the battle map chasing a retreating Supercarrier when I was met with three Atlases and just went nope and did a 180, with the bloody Liberators punting me every 20 seconds making even harder. I actually had to issue kill orders on anything between me and my escorts to run away from those Atlases, it's quite hilarious now that I think about it.

I used to see the pirate Atlas as nothing but a bother until some mod in my campaigns (don't know the one that did it) properly set them up with double squall/locust, Heavy Autocannon + Hellbore and even reinforced bulkheads and it's just nasty, more or less a super sized Hammerhead with disgusting bursts of firepower with just 20FP.

[Nafensoriel]

@Arcagnello
At the time I had 4 apogees and a massed collection of Dmod ships. I basically sent enforcers forward to die since they all had flak of some kind.
Was fun. The game has an entirely different dynamic when you let the enemy fleets have the potential to overwhelm you.

[Arcagnello]

@Arcagnello
At the time I had 4 apogees and a massed collection of Dmod ships. I basically sent enforcers forward to die since they all had flak of some kind.
Was fun. The game has an entirely different dynamic when you let the enemy fleets have the potential to overwhelm you.

Safety Override Enforcers spamming sabots and having assault cannons are nothing to be trifled with.

I've had PTSD inducing fights with luddic path, some madman with mods also added a couple cruisers with built in safety ovverides.


I also just went into another masochism fight.

The fight inmmediately devolved into a capital slugfest with supporting carriers/ballistic missiles on both sides

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And it just never stopped

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I managed to drive the relentless capital ship wave back into their own side of the map where I could pack them close togheder enough to make the ones at the back unable to properly fire but at that point both my frontline tanks were on the verge of breaking. THose damn hellbore cannons are nasty and the 200 residual armor my capitals have barely puts a dent in the frigade sized shells they fire.

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It's at the point where one Prophet is taken out that I realize I may have waited too long to retreat and quickly deply my fast battlecruisers to delay the enemy long enough for the remaining prophet to retreat and fighting the good fight in the next egagement

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I retreat with my whole fleet and immediately re-engage but I'm flabbergasted by the fact my deployment points barely rose from the 160 to 240 it was in the first engagement. What is even worse is the fact that with most of the Legions and Liberators taken care of, wich were potent but almost completely hard countered by the overwhelming anti air prowes of all my ships made way for complete, unadulterated Onslaught spam.

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Both by Ziz Battlecruisers buy time for my second and last prophet to retreat once again and I'm forced to deploy all my cruiser reserves as even the carriers and missile cruisers I used in both the long and grueling engagements are almost out of CR

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And just when I start to visibly sweat as I see that all three XIV Onslaughts with level 20 officers in each have come out to play, the enemy's spine finally shatters and they begin to retreat!

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But it's not over yet, there are still a lot of capitals left and the enemy still intends to fight for the third serving, so I redeploy my leftover, half mangled Prophet for the last, no quarter engagements and hyperspace soon begins to be littered with the many carcasses of the once proud dominion flagships, there is so much carnage that it's even hard to press onward as all my ships are beginning to get malfuctions

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The fight ends, my Prophet is once again forced for the third and final time to retreat and we even manage to defeat every single enemy that dared challenge me with a fleet three times the amount of combat-ready ships compared to mine.

The proud Hegemony admiral that dared to gloat via comms on board her ancient,venerable flagship, passed down generations after generations to try and remember now lost glory is now paralyzed, not even able to return fire and the massive armored monster is inches away from the escape it now so desperately seeks. Its crew cries screams of until-now hidden desperation as her commander slowly takes her father's hat off her head, puts it on her chest and closes her eyes.

Suddently, almost as if the once proud behemoth waited for that exact moment, the struggling engines die out with a wimper, the reactor leaks like a dragon's heart pierced by a spear and the bulkheads crack and rupture as if the metal and ceramite armor entity had a soul and was contorting its now mangled face in its death throes. Then it was just the quiet company of hyperspace left, accompanying the tens of thousands of men and women into the empty void.

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25 capital ships between Liberators, Legions, Onslaughts and XIV Onslaughts I had to deal with. It's a miracle I only lost 2 ships out of that whole ordeal.

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This was great. I do not think I'm reducing maximum fleet size anytime soon and will probably increase battle size to something like 1000-1500 once I get a monster pc. I hope you liked my rambling and my overdramatizations

[Igncom1]

Hellbore's are my large HE weapon of choice now for ballistic weapons. Why even bother with all these hightech fancy *** devices and tools when you can just take all the armour of anything you shoot at, in one damned shot?

And for it's cost and flux efficiency I'd say there really isn't a better choice for HE outside of missiles.

[Arcagnello]

Hellbore's are my large HE weapon of choice now for ballistic weapons. Why even bother with all these hightech fancy *** devices and tools when you can just take all the armour of anything you shoot at, in one damned shot?

And for it's cost and flux efficiency I'd say there really isn't a better choice for HE outside of missiles.

What if I told you that the Kadur Remnant basically have their own version of a Hellbore but it costs 30 OP, is even more inaccurate and has a 7 round clip?

[Igncom1]

Hellbore's are my large HE weapon of choice now for ballistic weapons. Why even bother with all these hightech fancy *** devices and tools when you can just take all the armour of anything you shoot at, in one damned shot?

And for it's cost and flux efficiency I'd say there really isn't a better choice for HE outside of missiles.

What if I told you that the Kadur Remnant basically have their own version of a Hellbore but it costs 30 OP, is even more inaccurate and has a 7 round clip?

Sounds ridiculous. Next play through I was already planning on just getting a silly amount of factions mods and utterly trashing the game, so I'll have to remember this one too!

[Arcagnello]

It will miss the broadside of a Conquest at its max range unless you heavily invest in skills/modspecs improving tracking, accuracy and shell velocity.

It's got a 7 round clip and instead of taking N seconds to reload each shell it actually starts reloading the whole clip (20 seconds) as soon as one shell is missing.

On the plus side, it can delete a fourth of an unshielded onslaught and strip most of it's frontal armor in the first volley (it also does EMP damage by the way) provided all the shells hit. It's that inaccurate.

I really suggest you to play the Kadur Remnant. They function rather uniquely compared to the Hegemony, just beware of their 1.2 ratio shields if you plan on leaving them on your frontline vessels. I sure didn't.

Edit: I suggest to also install Ship/Weapon Pack 1.12.0 and More HullMods 1.4.0 since they both deepen and broaden the amount of viable ship builds you can have.

[DubTre6]

I can always appreciate a little masochism, keep up the good work! 

[Daynen]

Four engagements on one fleet is already pretty brutal.  Props to the warrior who charges into the maw of hell and proudly displays his scars!

[Arcagnello]

I fear that this has become that kind of thread where if I don't post something even a little more ridicolous than the last battle it's not worth posting. Here it finally is. There are going to be a lot of typos and me naming things wrong so I hope you're ok with that

Long story short, previous campaign had become unplayable due to randomized sector having upwards to 9 colonized systems/stations in one star system, making save times take longer than actual play time. I restarded the campaign and played with the Kadur Again, only for them to be nuked by the Hegemony thanks to Nex and me honestly having better things to do than retaking the Revenant Gestalt from 5 grand invasion fleets all the time.

So I broke my commission with Kadur, wich are now desperately holding on and retaking their colonies only for them to be invaded by either Hegemony or Persean League and aligned myself with Hazard Mining Incorporated, I'm currently owning 2 colonies and have other 5 I conquered for HMI and then bought governance of. It's amazing how good of a feature that is provided you've got the money to litterally buy planets (you can't buy governance of planets that are over size 4), wich grants you the colony's income while the faction more or less babysits it against most threats.

Anyway, I'm at the beginning of late game when I'm starting to think of nuking certain very annoying factions where I decide to go on an exploration trip wen disaster strikes and I'm on the other side of the sector when the Roider Union decided to send a 3-fleet invasion force to Dover, my main planet that's in the Dominion resurgent Lore sector. What's worse is the fact that planet also has all my stored weapons/ships so I'm also losing around 350k a month in storage fees. Damn me and my hoarding.

There's nothing I can do for that so I tacbomb and raid their nearest planet out of spite, refuel/resupply and then head back to my now conquered home planet.
The fleets are barely dented from my forces and I try and kite some of them away to fight individually, wich proves useless. One brave allied picket manages to distract one fleet so I grow up some cohones and finally enter the fray against two invasion fleets at once.

By this point I've somewhat refined my techinque of fighting a larger force. Choose a mobile fleet composition to push aggressively and kill the enemy fast enough for it to be continuously deploying stuff and npt being able to use its numerical advantage; then slowly start retreating to your side and retreat the moment any of the important ships start having CR degradation; what I did not expect out of this tried and true method was the sheer armound of times I had to do that.

To clear things up, I'm playing with an HMI/HMI Techmined/Pirate ship composition. HMI ships are mostly all damage dealers, HMI techmined are shield tanks and lastly, Pirate ships (mostly conversions from the Underworld mod) wich are a mobile mix of medium-to-long range firepower and Point Defence. The Roider union (as far as I've seen it) is built around carriers and everything is rather versatile, mobile and with a strong focus on durability. I've also used some Relic Ships from Tahlan Shipworks including the valhalla wich is 75FP in the earlier part of the campaign but they're now sitting in storage until I figure how (or overcome my procastinational tendencies and put my head into it for once) I can increase their FP values from their Json file.

First engagement is a go and I deploy the ships in my fleet who are the best at dealing with fighter/bomber overload, but it looks ike the AI is intend on deploying the battleships first for once, accompanied by small carrier ships, mainly the Ranch.

While the "Girth is Worth" and "Optimal Waistline" Scarecrow Cruisers tank and overload shields

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And my "Plunder Then Yarr" Dragon Hybrid Battlecruiser (formerly an Odyssey) pummels them from afar with both guns and saturation bombers

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Both of my Slugworth carriers mince them to pieces with their Rocksaw heavy fighters. I don't feel bad about spamming them at all, you'll see why later.

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I push my lines "a bit" too far, all the way into their spawn when my own ships start getting CR problems so I have my cruisers escort the slower carriers while I take comand of the Dragon and backpedal beside them, until the moment I retreat everything at once. The first eggaments ends with the enemy having suffered little more than 100 fleetpoints worth of losses. Nowhere near enough to get more than 140 FP compared to the enemy's 260 in the next battle, so I grind on for the second serving!

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The second battle starts and I change my composition up a bit to be more offense-focused. I bring in what is probably the strongest pound-for-pound Junker Ship from HMI, the Roach King and one of my favourite ships to pilot myself, the Marinas from HMI Techmined.

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While the "Polnareff" just runs everything over with its disgusting firepower of 6 Arbalest Autocannons and two medium HE ballistics (wich are basically two light assault guns strapped togheder), I go around deleting frigades and phase ships with my Marinas (It gets 600 weapon damage and flux dissipation for like 2-3 seconds but it's virtually teethless when it's not active and is made of fiberglass), occasionally helping the bigger ships take down the enemy's big chungus squad.

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This time around I remember to set defensive points for my fleet after having them capture some points so that I can properly fall back due to PPT time restrictions but I still have to fall back with smaller ships and replace them to properly use all my cruisers and capital

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I retreat my forces once again as I finally start gaining extra FleetPoints as the enemy is destroyed/ gets disabled/ retreats since I decide to play it safe and commit to the third engagement, their list of destroyed/disabled ships now neatly filling up the ship window

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The third battle begins with the enemy pushing its last, mostly mangled battleships out to meet my defensive line and recieve the proper treatment for that very specific illness called "You conquered my waifu and I'll now take your laifu".

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The lost units now make way for some of the most annoying fighter/interceptor spam I've seen in a while, but it does not possess any sort of pushing power against my fleet fully kitted out with Point Defence AI and they soon get pushed back into their spawn, where the farm truly starts

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It took three engagements but I can finally stand my ground and the enemy is forced into a retreat before I am, having taken too many losses. Now the FP balance is equal and I can finally deploy all my smaller, faster, slightly caffeinated and sometimes overridden ships to close the battle once and for all!

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It seems there's only medium-small enemy carriers left in the enemy fleet and a LOT of them, leading to a very "muh FPS" aneurism-inducing struggle where every single one of my deployed units is in this exact situation:

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The battle draws to a close and I can finally, FINALLY order my second in command to deal with all the stragglers as I reap a couple million units of XP for my guy and enough resources in the debris to warrant a couple of runs to the shortly retaken home planet of mine:

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I honestly don't know how many enemy ships those were since the battle results can count a ship as both destroyed/disabled and retreated at the same time if the battle is spread across multiple engagements, but the one thing I'm sure of is that it was 1553 FleetPoints worth of enemies, 50-65% of that being carriers.

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Result screen is quite predictable with the two Rocksaw carriers and the Roach King doing most of the damage, with the other units acting more as support and linebackers.

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I'm glad the slugworths are not as disgusting now that I installed the new Roider update wich reduces Assault Cannon damage on the rocksaw to the soon-to-arrive 0.9.5 patch (100-->75).


I'm probably going to disrupt most Orbital Works/ Heavy Industries if not conquering most of the Roider Union planets where they have em to at least limit the ridicolous offensive they've given me as of late, but I'll probably have to invest several millions into star fortresses on each and every of my colonies first. This whole battle took me around 2 hours to come on top.  I'd say "never again" but it was actually rather fun and challenging and I'll probably have to suffer the same fate when Hegemony/Sindrian Diktat/Persean League are next in the chopping block. WIll probably update this thread again in a week or two unless I get the very stupid idea of attacking multiple [Redacted] at once.

Have a good day and battle on folks!