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Author Topic: Ship tier list  (Read 32794 times)

TaLaR

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #30 on: January 04, 2021, 09:23:02 AM »

Any tierlist that doesn't have Afflictor at SS rating is a failure imo. What else can defeat 30 to 40 times it's own DP worth of enemies?
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Igncom1

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #31 on: January 04, 2021, 09:32:51 AM »

I don't even know the controls to pilot a ship!  ;D
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Sunders are the best ship in the game.

RustyCabbage

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #32 on: January 04, 2021, 09:45:49 AM »

That said, the atlas MkII is a godlike ship for 24 DP and YOU CANNOT CHANGE MY MIND though I respect your right to try.  ;D
Don't get me wrong, I'd love it too if I ever got to use it in a mission or tournament setting. But aside from memes, I'm just very unwilling to lug around an OP-starved 6 burn ship (yeah, Tugs, but at that point I could run something better, so at meme status it remains).

Retry

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #33 on: January 04, 2021, 09:49:25 AM »

Any tierlist that doesn't have Afflictor at SS rating is a failure imo. What else can defeat 30 to 40 times it's own DP worth of enemies?
Not the afflictor.  Even with the best piloting possible it has neither the PPT nor the raw missile capacity to inflict 240+ DP worth of damages per sortie.

If I had HELMUT's level of piloting skill, I still wouldn't enjoy the play style of twitchy ships like frigates, or most phase ships, and certainly not phase frigates.  Since I can do more with larger ships for much longer periods of time, with more enjoyment and much less stress, there's exactly 0 chance I'd give an Afflictor SS-tier.
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TaLaR

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #34 on: January 04, 2021, 09:58:55 AM »

Any tierlist that doesn't have Afflictor at SS rating is a failure imo. What else can defeat 30 to 40 times it's own DP worth of enemies?
Not the afflictor.  Even with the best piloting possible it has neither the PPT nor the raw missile capacity to inflict 240+ DP worth of damages per sortie.

If I had HELMUT's level of piloting skill, I still wouldn't enjoy the play style of twitchy ships like frigates, or most phase ships, and certainly not phase frigates.  Since I can do more with larger ships for much longer periods of time, with more enjoyment and much less stress, there's exactly 0 chance I'd give an Afflictor SS-tier.


Maxed out character-piloted Afflictor vs 300 DP worth of Falcons. I also did a similar test vs roughly 300 dp worth of standard sim capitals/cruisers, didn't record it though. Technically it's Cabal Afflictor with very minor upgrades, but difference isn't enough to affect the outcome.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2021, 10:02:42 AM by TaLaR »
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Igncom1

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #35 on: January 04, 2021, 10:06:45 AM »

Why even arm them at that point? Not like you were being hit.
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TaLaR

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #36 on: January 04, 2021, 10:13:07 AM »

This particular setup was meant to prove that (a properly piloted) Afflictor doesn't care about Pilums, in some discussion where they were mentioned as phase counter.
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SCC

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #37 on: January 04, 2021, 10:25:05 AM »

Afflictor might be pretty powerful in player hands, but since I can't stand phase ships, I don't use it at all. I have to acknowledge that it can be very powerful, though it requires substantial skill.
That said, the atlas MkII is a godlike ship for 24 DP and YOU CANNOT CHANGE MY MIND though I respect your right to try.  ;D
Don't get me wrong, I'd love it too if I ever got to use it in a mission or tournament setting. But aside from memes, I'm just very unwilling to lug around an OP-starved 6 burn ship (yeah, Tugs, but at that point I could run something better, so at meme status it remains).
Yeah, Atlas Mk II's burn speed completely kills its viability.
I mean RustyCabbage put the Mule and Shepherd in D tier, that's crazy (yes I know it only assumes combat).
Mule belongs there. It's a subpar freighter, a subpar combat ship and it puts your cargo in danger.

Megas

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #38 on: January 04, 2021, 10:35:59 AM »

Afflictor might be pretty powerful in player hands, but since I can't stand phase ships, I don't use it at all. I have to acknowledge that it can be very powerful, though it requires substantial skill.
I do not like phase ships aside from Doom because every time I see the AI pilot them, all they do is run away until they run out of PPT then die when CR decays to zero before every other ship.  They make good playership bombers, though.  Doom, on the other hand, is great for either player or AI use, and it can brawl.  Fighting against them, is annoying, and player has to jump through hoops to prevent his allies from giving openings to enemy phase ships.

As for Mule, it can tank and deal some damage.  Not top-tier, but alright at brawling up to midgame.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2021, 10:37:59 AM by Megas »
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Retry

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #39 on: January 04, 2021, 10:49:53 AM »


Maxed out character-piloted Afflictor vs 300 DP worth of Falcons. I also did a similar test vs roughly 300 dp worth of standard sim capitals/cruisers, didn't record it though. Technically it's Cabal Afflictor with very minor upgrades, but difference isn't enough to affect the outcome.
It's genuinely difficult to make out what's going on design-wise since the video resolution is not so hot, but a maxed player skills would appear to change the original scenario a bit, no?  The Falcons seem like they'd require 2 barrages of those AMBs without maxed skills if I've done my napkin-math right, which would mean you'd have at-best run out of ammo by the 15th Falcon without them (if PPT didn't get you first, without Combat Endurance skill), and of course that requires going heavily into combat skills with all the opportunity costs that entails.  Even forgetting that this isn't actually a Vanilla Afflictor, which IIRC changes some weapon mounts for more flexibility in addition to across-the-board stat boosts, though I can only actually see 3 AMBs for sure and so can't tell if you actually got any use out of that part with this particular build)

You could post a video of an Afflictor soloing a star fortress, that won't change a thing.  I don't like frigates, I don't like phase ships, I hate the playstyle and limited PPT that accompanies both.  That someone else can utilize them and win a contrived scenario that's technically achievable will not make me yield an SS ranking for it.
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #40 on: January 04, 2021, 11:05:05 AM »

Maxed out character-piloted Afflictor vs 300 DP worth of Falcons. I also did a similar test vs roughly 300 dp worth of standard sim capitals/cruisers, didn't record it though. Technically it's Cabal Afflictor with very minor upgrades, but difference isn't enough to affect the outcome.

I feel like there's a number of human piloted capital ships that would have had no problem with a pirate falcon fleet using only pilums and talons.  Simply swapping in Xyphos for the talons and dropping stuff that never actually connected with the afflictor would likely have resulted in a completely different result for the afflictor.  Such a swap would have less impact against a capital.

I'll also note quoting a 30 or 40 ratio in terms of DP only really matters when you're deploying more than one ship at a time and hitting the DP cap.  Default settings guarantees you can deploy 120 DP worth of ships in any given fight in the campaign.  Since the AI is not that good at piloting afflictors, I feel the 30-40 ratio is misleading.  15 afflictors (120 DP) deployed at once does not defeat every enemy vanilla fleet in the campaign, nor does it defeat 3600 DP worth of enemy ships (say 60 paragons?).   Two paragons, one player piloted, other with a hand crafted officer, probably can defeat every vanilla fleet 1 on 1 (fleets ganging up is a different matter).

If Afflictor is SS, why isn't the typical combat portion of a fleet 100% afflictors for most players?  Or put another way, why do you have an Odyssey in your campaign fleet?  Simply for variety, or perhaps it fills a combat purpose that a vanilla afflictor simply can't?

An Afflictor can be an amazing ship in player hands, depending on the player and the situation.  However, they also are very intolerant of player mistakes.  I wouldn't solely rely on it in an iron man run, for example.  And even player piloted afflictors can struggle against campaign high tech bounty/tri-tach fleets or redacted fleets.  So saying they're the best single ship in all combat situations (which is the typical meaning behind a SS rating in a combat context), is probably not correct.  There are counters, and those counters exist in actual campaign play.  And certainly for some things outside of combat, like trading, it is a sub-optimal ship.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2021, 11:32:22 AM by Hiruma Kai »
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Thaago

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #41 on: January 04, 2021, 12:35:47 PM »

My only issue with the Atlas Mk II, like others, is the burn speed. 6, 7 with a hullmod, 9 with both, but because its a capital class those hullmods are relatively expensive: 65/220 OP iirc.

Re: Mule. I love them in the early game. In terms of combat value, they are somewhere between a combat frigate and a combat destroyer, depending on loadout. They might be "worth" 6DP instead of 7. In early game I'm no where close to having a 120 DP fleet though I don't care about combat power/DP efficiency like I do mid/late game or in a tournament because it doesn't matter yet.

Instead of a Mule, I could buy a Buffalo and a Frigate. This would be 3 fuel/LY instead of 2, probably ~8 supplies/ly instead of 7, and 350 cargo (with a mid capacity frigate like a lasher or wold) (440 with expanded cargo holds on the Buffalo if they fit with MS) instead of 250. Combat strength would be reduced, and if I need to run away (Ironmode), I'm almost certainly losing the Buffalo. Raw cargo carrying efficiency is moderately lower.

I don't particularly care about raw cargo efficiency at this stage of the game either though, because I'm usually bounty hunting: I need enough cargo to get me to my target, load up on the non-metal loot (mostly weapons), and back with spare space for emergency supplies. Mules do that for me and also give me an off destroyer.
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TaLaR

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #42 on: January 04, 2021, 10:14:01 PM »

An Afflictor can be an amazing ship in player hands, depending on the player and the situation.  However, they also are very intolerant of player mistakes.  I wouldn't solely rely on it in an iron man run, for example.  And even player piloted afflictors can struggle against campaign high tech bounty/tri-tach fleets or redacted fleets.  So saying they're the best single ship in all combat situations (which is the typical meaning behind a SS rating in a combat context), is probably not correct.  There are counters, and those counters exist in actual campaign play.  And certainly for some things outside of combat, like trading, it is a sub-optimal ship.

TT bounties are primary targets for Afflictors - getting that Astral out of commission before fleets even meet counts for a lot, same for normally hard to catch Herons. Dooms are genuinely dangerous though, unphasing around them without having dropped speed to zero in advance is a potential instant death. Need to be very aware of their positions and reach.
Redacted are not Afflictor's bane either. You can't directly kill a Radiant with Reaper Afflictor in non-suicidal manner, but you can ALMOST kill it with Reaper Afflictor and then safely finish the job with AM Afflictor. Or just use AM from the start, though that would be slow vs up-skilled armor.

There are very few situations when AM Afflictor really can't do anything. As someone noted, Xyphos spam would be a problem, but you probably still could pick off ships that got too far from carriers. Afflictor is also NOT good at soloing high tier space stations - stations have near perfect overlapping 360 coverage, so there is often no safe attack trajectory that won't get you killed/badly damaged in 2 seconds needed to rephase. But in almost any fleet combat situation Afflictor can kill many times it's DP worth of ships.

Fleet composition-wise my goal is up to 5 Afflictors, a player capital (Conquest, Odyssey or some fast mod capital), officer-piloted capitals/cruisers + carriers, logistics. A few reserve player ships of other types optional.

Requiring logistic usefulness as part of SS rating would be silly imo - no ship can have both top tier combat performance and logistic profile.
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Serenitis

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #43 on: January 07, 2021, 03:31:15 AM »

I'm a big fan of the Mule.
It's not really 'the best' at anything, but it's the only ship (I can think of) that can do an okay job at multiple roles simultaneously.
Brawler, frieghter, carrier, surveyor, missile platform. All of it in 1 ship, at the same time. That's some primo early game efficiency in a very easy to obtain package.
The fact that on top of that it has a great mobility system just pads out its life expectancy even more.

why do you have an Odyssey in your campaign fleet? 
To fling wrecks and enemy ships accross the map like an angry sealion.
I need to hit that ship by throwing this ship at it. Nothing else in this game matters any more.
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Locklave

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #44 on: January 09, 2021, 05:20:15 AM »

I feel like this tier list is "ships I like most" more then ships best to worst.

I like the Venture, I like it so much I wish it was better so I could use it not feeling like I'm gimping my fleets. It's not B tier by any means. Colossus Mk III is a better ship by a vast margin but is lower tier. It's just a better ships -50 cargo, 300 vs 350, but 2 real fighter bays and ground support (which is rare as a built in mod). It's also a brick but it doesn't need to be close to do it's job.

Shepherd is a better/cheaper mini Venture. If you wanted the systems/cargo of it without being dead weight in AI control. But it's in the same tier as the inferior Venture.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2021, 05:21:49 AM by Locklave »
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