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Author Topic: Ship tier list  (Read 32795 times)

pedro1_1

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Ship tier list
« on: January 02, 2021, 12:43:00 PM »

So I was thinking about which ship is stronger than which to the point I decided to create a tier list, but unlike last time I used tiermaker to make the tier list, so here is the link for the tiermaker site.

I used the normal tier list logic of which ship is stronguer is based around on how left and up it is.

The logistics ships are last for the tiers since they need to be categorized apart from the cobat ships.

Tier list

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Updated Tier list

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« Last Edit: January 03, 2021, 04:07:32 PM by pedro1_1 »
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Null Ganymede

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #1 on: January 02, 2021, 12:55:44 PM »

Nah.

Too many factors affect ship value. Even in a over-constrained format like the Tournaments the above list is wrong, in campaign it never had a chance to be right.

Try building your entire fleet around exploiting key features of D-tier ships and they go SS-tier ez.
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Thaago

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #2 on: January 02, 2021, 01:03:11 PM »

:sees Gryphon as D tier but Venture as B tier :

:cries:

Centurions are also really good. The more I play with them the more I like them. With SO, front shield conversion, machine guns, an antimatter blaster, a reaper, and fleet aggression cranked up to max so as not to require officers, they are nasty. Nearly as good as omens, though they trade the amazing utility of the EMP emitter for anti-shield firepower and toughness. The combo of 360 shield --> Damper field with SO to lower flux at double speed while taking reduced damage --> shield extending twice as fast is very powerful.
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Ishman

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #3 on: January 02, 2021, 04:46:34 PM »

Gryphon in D tier, whew.

You realize you can use some weapon group trickery to make them actually good? Sabots linked together with a weapon to force them to fire, whereupon some ship eats 7,000 kinetic burst and 14,000 emp (this can be done 6 times before only having pods left and popping autoforge, for 12/24 rounds of get fluxed), and following up with a hurricane or locust. Retreating and reengaging recharges the system, meaning you can use it twice per combat encounter. The only vanilla ship which can tank a gryphon's focus is the paragon, it lets you actually hunt down [redacted] safely as you can delete the frigates and destroyers making your AI panic with a button click. That is, without resorting to spark drovers/converted hangar cheese.

It's just not a very fun ship to fly yourself because it's a slow foam block, but it is UNDENIABLY one of the strongest ships (admittedly the AI can't use it correctly without abusing weapon group quirks).

I'll leave Thaago to extol the virtues of the various frigates, as I don't use them much.
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Thaago

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #4 on: January 02, 2021, 06:23:56 PM »

I used to not use frigates, but tournament testing has revealed to me that they really pack a lot of value, even without officers. They do die though...

A 'this is what I had around at the time' Gryphon build that worked shockingly well: Squall + 3 annihilator racks + 2 harpoon pods, hvd, a few vulcans, Unstable Injector (important), ECCM, medium vents/caps (no loadout design in that campaign). Aggressive officer with missile skill (was ~level 4 when I first put her on) and a few other offensive boosters. Missiles are in separate groups, but in linked fire mode.

I didn't quite expect much out of it, but it just kept getting more and more kills so I never bothered changing the loadout. Watching it solo hunt down and murder an officered (level 14) enemy Doom that had a decent loadout was eye opening. Between the expanded racks and the forge it still has missiles at the end of multi capital bounties so... not sure when its supposed to get bad.
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Amoebka

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #5 on: January 02, 2021, 09:11:33 PM »

Putting variants in the same tier feels wrong. Pirate Shrike is clearly better than HT Shrike, why are they in the same tier? Pather Cerberus is a beast, while the normal one is meh. Hegemony Kite is actually great, while the pather one is worse than the default/pirate ones. Pather Brawler/Lasher is much better than default, etc.

If you argue that the differences aren't big enough to warrant a tier of difference, why is Onslaught (XIV) higher than the default? 100 extra armor on a low-tech capital is barely noticeable, while free SO on a frigate translates to ~25% extra OP.
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Golde

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #6 on: January 02, 2021, 09:14:29 PM »

I can tell you off the bat Drover, Heroin, Sunder, HH, Tempist and Hyperion are NOT B tier.
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pedro1_1

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #7 on: January 02, 2021, 10:41:44 PM »

Nah.

Too many factors affect ship value. Even in a over-constrained format like the Tournaments the above list is wrong, in campaign it never had a chance to be right.

Try building your entire fleet around exploiting key features of D-tier ships and they go SS-tier ez.

There is no such thing as too many factors to track. Even more on the end of the update lifespan, were all of the factors were found and acounted for so that only the players own doctrine and skill are left as the main diferentiation factors. And specialising in a doctrine based on using the abilitys of a tier of ships does not mean the ships are stronger or weaker than they where before, it just mean you are really good at geting the ships to work toguether.

:sees Gryphon as D tier but Venture as B tier :

:cries:
Gryphon in D tier, whew.

You realize you can use some weapon group trickery to make them actually good? Sabots linked together with a weapon to force them to fire, whereupon some ship eats 7,000 kinetic burst and 14,000 emp (this can be done 6 times before only having pods left and popping autoforge, for 12/24 rounds of get fluxed), and following up with a hurricane or locust. Retreating and reengaging recharges the system, meaning you can use it twice per combat encounter. The only vanilla ship which can tank a gryphon's focus is the paragon, it lets you actually hunt down [redacted] safely as you can delete the frigates and destroyers making your AI panic with a button click. That is, without resorting to spark drovers/converted hangar cheese.

It's just not a very fun ship to fly yourself because it's a slow foam block, but it is UNDENIABLY one of the strongest ships (admittedly the AI can't use it correctly without abusing weapon group quirks).
A 'this is what I had around at the time' Gryphon build that worked shockingly well: Squall + 3 annihilator racks + 2 harpoon pods, hvd, a few vulcans, Unstable Injector (important), ECCM, medium vents/caps (no loadout design in that campaign). Aggressive officer with missile skill (was ~level 4 when I first put her on) and a few other offensive boosters. Missiles are in separate groups, but in linked fire mode.

I didn't quite expect much out of it, but it just kept getting more and more kills so I never bothered changing the loadout. Watching it solo hunt down and murder an officered (level 14) enemy Doom that had a decent loadout was eye opening. Between the expanded racks and the forge it still has missiles at the end of multi capital bounties so... not sure when its supposed to get bad.

The venture is B- because it offers benefits in relation to the Mora carriers, which compete for the same niche, those benefits are being cheaper (15 DP Vs. 20 DP, 3 fuel/lightyear Vs. 4 fuel/lightyear), having a better shield(7.000 base capacitors Vs. 4.000 base capacitors, 300 dissipation Vs. 200 dissipation, same everything else*), which is more important for suport ships than for main line ships, and having the surveing equipament hullmod.
The Gryphon is D tier because it does not offer anything substatially better or different than the Heron, which is it's main competitor for it's role, it's not cheaper(20 DP Vs. 20 DP, 3 fuel/lightyear Vs. 3 fuel/lightyear), it does not have a better shield (5.000 base capacitors Vs. 5.000 base capacitors, 200 dissipation Vs. 300 dissipation, same everything else*) and no campain hullmod to help, even something as simple as a hullmod that make it cost half the supplies used on the campain map would make it go higher.
This in combination whit the extra danger Gryphon needs to expose itself to fight brings the conclusion that there is no reason to use the Gryphon other than for Roleplay and no carriers runs. If it was really terrible it would be F tier.

Centurions are also really good. The more I play with them the more I like them. With SO, front shield conversion, machine guns, an antimatter blaster, a reaper, and fleet aggression cranked up to max so as not to require officers, they are nasty. Nearly as good as omens, though they trade the amazing utility of the EMP emitter for anti-shield firepower and toughness. The combo of 360 shield --> Damper field with SO to lower flux at double speed while taking reduced damage --> shield extending twice as fast is very powerful.
I'll leave Thaago to extol the virtues of the various frigates, as I don't use them much.
I used to not use frigates, but tournament testing has revealed to me that they really pack a lot of value, even without officers. They do die though...

Almost as powerfull as the Omen would mean it is a B+, and given that I don't have much experience whit the Centurion I will need to do some tests.

Putting variants in the same tier feels wrong. Pirate Shrike is clearly better than HT Shrike, why are they in the same tier? Pather Cerberus is a beast, while the normal one is meh. Hegemony Kite is actually great, while the pather one is worse than the default/pirate ones. Pather Brawler/Lasher is much better than default, etc.

If you argue that the differences aren't big enough to warrant a tier of difference, why is Onslaught (XIV) higher than the default? 100 extra armor on a low-tech capital is barely noticeable, while free SO on a frigate translates to ~25% extra OP.

The variants of a ship can be on the same tier because of them not having the same rating, which you would have noticed if you had read carefully, but to sumarize the Shrike(P) is C+ and the normal Shrike is C-, the Cerberus and Lasher are all on a hole that they fill alone, there is one variant too many of Brawlers and the Kites are all on the low tier because of it's general weakness. And 100 armor is not the reason why the XIV Onslaught ison tier above, it is the extra flux in combination whit the armor that makes the ship S tier.

I can tell you off the bat Drover, Heroin, Sunder, HH, Tempist and Hyperion are NOT B tier.

Drover, Sunder, Hammerhead and Tempest all have the same problems, that of being really good at doing one thing that does not scale past mid-game whitout dedicated help.
Hyperion is a high risk high reward ship that if it works it works really well but if it doesn't it fail hard, not something deserving of an A ranking.
heron is misranked at B+ rather than A.
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Amoebka

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #8 on: January 02, 2021, 10:55:39 PM »

Both Drover and Hammerhead are so good in the lategame you can literally run monofleets of them and win. Spark Drover is widely beleived to be the best cheese strat of the current patch.
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Maeleth

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #9 on: January 03, 2021, 03:32:04 AM »

So I was thinking about which ship is stronger

Stronger at doing what, exactly? And at what point of the game? AI controlled or in player's hands?

 Nothing beats Salvage Rig if your aim is self-sustaining fleet, same goes for Shepherd and early game exploration/looting. Gryphon/Pirate Falcon/Doom/etc is a mean beast, capable of deleting entire fleets in human hands, while being pretty meh support vessel under AIs. Dominator is a powerhouse that will plow through early game fleets without any effort, but at later stages it turns into punching bag with zero chances of survival. And so on, and so forth...
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Daynen

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #10 on: January 03, 2021, 07:01:34 AM »

Well at least he put the Atlas mkII as a solid B tier.  I can live with that.
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Kpop

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #11 on: January 03, 2021, 12:58:15 PM »

Conquest in S tier? My man I do enjoy piloting a conquest in an unoptimized double broadside build but it is nowhere close. B tier would be pushing it.

Also doom not being S tier is just wrong.

Stronger at doing what, exactly? And at what point of the game? AI controlled or in player's hands?

 Nothing beats Salvage Rig if your aim is self-sustaining fleet, same goes for Shepherd and early game exploration/looting. Gryphon/Pirate Falcon/Doom/etc is a mean beast, capable of deleting entire fleets in human hands, while being pretty meh support vessel under AIs. Dominator is a powerhouse that will plow through early game fleets without any effort, but at later stages it turns into punching bag with zero chances of survival. And so on, and so forth...

Falcon(p) is more than cabable in AI hands. I did a pirate playthrough once and had 5-6 aggressive officers all in those and they caused carnage. Sabots, reapers, and IR pulse lasers because why not.
« Last Edit: January 03, 2021, 01:00:15 PM by Kpop »
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Retry

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #12 on: January 03, 2021, 01:32:50 PM »

Conquest in S tier? My man I do enjoy piloting a conquest in an unoptimized double broadside build but it is nowhere close. B tier would be pushing it.
Conquest is no lower than A tier, there is no just tier list where the Conquest rates lower than the Onslaught.


Isn't this around the 3rd ship tier list thread that's cropped up?
At least make a Fighter tier list or a Weapon tier list to spice things up a bit, at this point
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RustyCabbage

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #13 on: January 03, 2021, 01:59:13 PM »

Alright, I feel like sharing my own hot takes today:
Spoiler
[close]

Assumptions: combat only, AI controlled, accounting for DP budget, assuming they're being used at the appropriate phase of the game (you're not running many frigates in cap-spam late game), no LP ships (since there's such a drastic difference between default and restored versions), no skins unless they're noticeably different.

Grievous69

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Re: Ship tier list
« Reply #14 on: January 03, 2021, 02:07:49 PM »

Alright, I feel like sharing my own hot takes today:
Spoiler
[close]

Assumptions: combat only, AI controlled, accounting for DP budget, assuming they're being used at the appropriate phase of the game (you're not running many frigates in cap-spam late game), no LP ships (since there's such a drastic difference between default and restored versions), no skins unless they're noticeably different.
Nothing seems super out of the ordinary for the rules you set, but I'm curious, what's the reasoning behind Eagle being C tier? Sure it's nothing crazy but it seems like a solid AI ship all around.
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Please don't take me too seriously.
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