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Author Topic: Don't sleep on the Glimmer drone frigade!  (Read 5582 times)

Arcagnello

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Don't sleep on the Glimmer drone frigade!
« on: April 05, 2021, 12:59:19 PM »

Hey you.
Yes, you!
I know how you Tri-tach operatives rush to that blasted Automated Ships skill and completely forget about every single [redacted] ship but the Radiant and shove an Alpha core in it faster than it takes an Enforcer with a Faulty Power Grid to overload!

Well Sonny, I'm here to tell you that sometimes, sometimes the best options do not revolve around building your whole fleet back togheder to better synegize with that
Disgustingly-FleetPoints-Underpriced-TeleportsBehindYou-NothingPersonalKidDrone battleship!

No! There are smaller, smarter ways to solve your problems, and we're going to start this lenghty discussion with the Glimmer drone frigade, the most annoying little chestnut in the sector!

Assault Variant, must go faster
Do frigades and phase frigades annoy the everliving Ludd out of you? Don't you wish there was something that behaved exactly like a frigade does to a capital ships, but to frigades themselves?
With a recovery chance upon destruction higher than the chance of being helped without your consent by a Pirate Armada the moment you're dragging a mothballed XIV Legion back to the Core and a trusty, almost clean Gamma Core salvaged from an Officer's toilet; this nasty, tenacious little chestnut of a drone will rush into the enemy at the incredible speed of 276 space units per second and will keep fighting its unfortunate victim until it's either dead, out of targets or simply too tired to keep on going after its respectable 202 seconds of peak performance time runs out!
What's that, has the enemy thought it would be a good idea to deply an itty bitty Afflictor Phase frigade to hunt your gentle, soft backsides of your Legions? Just unleash this scourge of a squirrel filled up with all the Recreational Drugs in your cargo holdson its trail and that cowardly phase-abuser will not even be able to get away from it!
Spoiler
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Support Variant, the goodest o bois!
Do your targets keep getting away? Have you become so enamored with the thought of being able to make some tea by the time your capitals have made it to the frontline that you just happened to forget you do not have any meaningful way of immobilizing the enemy fast enough to kill it before it kites you around the entire map for 5 minutes? Well would you look at what I have here. This special version of the Glimmer has gotten its Gamma Core from a Pirate Microwave that saw way too many Harvested Organs during its life and now only has one mission in life, to fry everything that sits in front of it with an Ion Beam and two Salamander MRMs long enough for anything else in your fleet to reach and take care of it!
Does that not sound like the absolute best of friendly, ever reliable frigades? You could even send it on its way into battle and be sure that -thanks to its Unstable Injector and twin PD laser- the enemy will just be wasting however many minutes of their lives pointlessly chasing this one frigade while the rest of their forces are getting smoked faster than Organics when you have a Cryosleeper near your colonies!
Spoiler
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What do you say now, commander? No fancy cores, no need for it to be pristine and no need to even care for it in battle. Doesen't this very special chestnut feel like part of your fleet already?





« Last Edit: April 05, 2021, 01:37:01 PM by Arcagnello »
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robepriority

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Re: Don't sleep on the Glimmer drone frigade!
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2021, 01:03:08 PM »

Honestly I might just use it for the officer bonuses.

Arcagnello

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Re: Don't sleep on the Glimmer drone frigade!
« Reply #2 on: April 05, 2021, 01:06:34 PM »

Honestly I might just use it for the officer bonuses.

Oh yes, that is another good thing about gamma Cores. You just slap it in, give it Gunenry Implants and watch the enemy have their weapon range butchered by ECM rating! I did put Gunnery Implants on the Support variant since it basically IS a utility platform but the Assault variant needs as high of a recovery chance it can get because it IS going to die, not before doing a mess of things and distracting the enemy a great deal tough.
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pairedeciseaux

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Re: Don't sleep on the Glimmer drone frigade!
« Reply #3 on: April 05, 2021, 01:40:58 PM »

Hey you.
Yes, you!

(...)

What do you say now, commander? No fancy cores, no need for it to be pristine and no need to even care for it in battle. Doesen't this very special chestnut feel like part of your fleet already?

Your first Assault Variant does remind me what I did today with my Hyperion.

Does the AI-officered Glimmer benefit from the bonuses from Coordinated Maneuvers and Wolfpack Tactics?

( also, by the way, nice writing, you are a crazy person, I mean in a good way  ;D )
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Arcagnello

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Re: Don't sleep on the Glimmer drone frigade!
« Reply #4 on: April 05, 2021, 01:55:15 PM »

Hey you.
Yes, you!

(...)

What do you say now, commander? No fancy cores, no need for it to be pristine and no need to even care for it in battle. Doesen't this very special chestnut feel like part of your fleet already?

Your first Assault Variant does remind me what I did today with my Hyperion.

Does the AI-officered Glimmer benefit from the bonuses from Coordinated Maneuvers and Wolfpack Tactics?

( also, by the way, nice writing, you are a crazy person, I mean in a good way  ;D )

Both Glimmer and Lumen are frigades so they should get the benef..

Oh sweet Ludd what have I unleashed upon the Sector?

Also, thanks for the compliment! I had the stupid idea of theorizing a Gamma Core from a Pirate Microwave being repurposed to pilot [Redacted] Ships instead and just wrote it :P
« Last Edit: April 05, 2021, 01:56:48 PM by Arcagnello »
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Re: Don't sleep on the Glimmer drone frigade!
« Reply #5 on: April 05, 2021, 06:29:01 PM »

Honestly I might just use it for the officer bonuses.
It counts toward dp calculation?
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robepriority

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Re: Don't sleep on the Glimmer drone frigade!
« Reply #6 on: April 05, 2021, 06:31:19 PM »

Honestly I might just use it for the officer bonuses.
It counts toward dp calculation?

Implementing a core counts as hiring an officer, so every officer type boon gets applied, not just dp calc

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Re: Don't sleep on the Glimmer drone frigade!
« Reply #7 on: April 05, 2021, 07:57:44 PM »

Honestly I might just use it for the officer bonuses.
It counts toward dp calculation?

Implementing a core counts as hiring an officer, so every officer type boon gets applied, not just dp calc
Then that's the win button lol
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Arcagnello

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Re: Don't sleep on the Glimmer drone frigade!
« Reply #8 on: April 06, 2021, 02:44:51 AM »

Honestly I might just use it for the officer bonuses.
It counts toward dp calculation?

Implementing a core counts as hiring an officer, so every officer type boon gets applied, not just dp calc
Then that's the win button lol

Isn't if fun that the Gamma Cores powering dominion-era toasters can actually serve as officers and equally compete with level 5 officers 216 years after the Collapse?It's quite sad we can't actually raid or sat-bomb the Galatia Academy, because I'm quite sure they're definetly to blame for AI development if the Officers in the entire, known Sector suck so much.

 A Gamma Core integrated into an automated ship gets to pick 4 skills and that is arguably already stronger than 5 or 6 skills a regular officer guy gets. And then we get Beta and Alpha cores that can have 6 and 8 skills respectively. An Alpha Core does this by the way:
Perfectly balanced, as all 40 Deployment Points drone battleships should be.

I mean you can only get one of those with an Alpha Core installed and be above the malfunction Combat Readiness theshold, but do you really need more than one when a single Alpha-kun Radiant can solo two Onslaughts, a Conquest and a Dominator in the simulator, under AI control?
« Last Edit: April 06, 2021, 02:55:34 AM by Arcagnello »
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Anvel

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Re: Don't sleep on the Glimmer drone frigade!
« Reply #9 on: April 06, 2021, 02:55:25 AM »

Honestly I might just use it for the officer bonuses.
It counts toward dp calculation?

Implementing a core counts as hiring an officer, so every officer type boon gets applied, not just dp calc
Then that's the win button lol

Isn't if fun that the Gamma Cores powering dominion-era toasters can actually serve as officers and equally compete with level 5 officers 216 years after the Collapse? A Gamma core integrated into an automated ship gets to pick 4 skills and that is arguably already stronger than 5 or 6 skills a regular officer guy gets. And then we get Beta and Alpha cores that can have 6 and 8 skills respectively. An Alpha Core does this by the way:
Perfectly balanced, as all 40 Deployment Points drone battleships should be.

I mean you can only get one of those with an Alpha Core installed and be above the malfunction Combat Readiness theshold, but do you really need more than one when a single Alpha-kun Radiant can solo two Onslaughts, a Conquest and a Dominator in the simulator, under AI control?

Dumb loadout, will get rect on another Radiant with more balanced loadout and couple of frigates, even a paragon can easily counter that.
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Arcagnello

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Re: Don't sleep on the Glimmer drone frigade!
« Reply #10 on: April 06, 2021, 03:13:12 AM »

Honestly I might just use it for the officer bonuses.
It counts toward dp calculation?

Implementing a core counts as hiring an officer, so every officer type boon gets applied, not just dp calc
Then that's the win button lol

Isn't if fun that the Gamma Cores powering dominion-era toasters can actually serve as officers and equally compete with level 5 officers 216 years after the Collapse? A Gamma core integrated into an automated ship gets to pick 4 skills and that is arguably already stronger than 5 or 6 skills a regular officer guy gets. And then we get Beta and Alpha cores that can have 6 and 8 skills respectively. An Alpha Core does this by the way:
Perfectly balanced, as all 40 Deployment Points drone battleships should be.

I mean you can only get one of those with an Alpha Core installed and be above the malfunction Combat Readiness theshold, but do you really need more than one when a single Alpha-kun Radiant can solo two Onslaughts, a Conquest and a Dominator in the simulator, under AI control?

Dumb loadout, will get rect on another Radiant with more balanced loadout and couple of frigates, even a paragon can easily counter that.

That video was just a fun emphasis. This is the actual Radiant design I use and I'm pretty sure it can beat anything 1v1 under AI control that's not purpusefully even more overpowered for story reasons. Yes, even the new
Spoiler
Phase Chungus, Big Phungus, Perfectly healthy, grossly obese Phase Weeb?
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-I left the medium energy slots empty because there is no energy weapon that could possibly fit there that would be better than more Ordinance Points to keep the penta-Autopulse firing for longer
-Extended+Accellerated shields because this thing really likes to faceplant itself into everything it fights and I would love its incredibly expensive behind to stay in a pristine state by being covered in a shield almost at all times too
-Max Capacitors and Flux Coil Adjunct because I did a Luddic Path and have not picked both Automated Ships and Special Modifications skills by going up the technology tree twice in this particular campagin. I can assure you that a 3 S-modded radiant with Max capacitors and Max vents is even stronger
-Automated repair unit because despite the shield of this monstrosity having 0.36 damage to flux ratio and dissipating around 315 hard flux per second the AI still likes to take it down from time to time for reasons that must be completely beyond my understanding. Repairing engines/weapons faster when the shields are pointlessly lowered by the AI (instead of just, you know, executing 4 Phase Skimmers in quick succession backwards) ensures the radiant remains combat effective no matter what.
-The ship only has 2 weapon groups. All 5 Autopulse Lasers and the PD lasers. Split the Autopulses between two groups and the radiant will not fire all of them at once nearly as much. It sometimes shoots the ones on hardpoints into the void -maybe trying to shoot down Ludd himself for calling Alpha-kun Electronic Satan- but it's heavily mitigated by the Phase Skimmer also reorienting the ship towards whatever it is fighting.

Have fun with it, make sure to use it irresponsibly ;)

Edit: I've actually spent around half an hour in the Simulator to better gauge the combat effectiveness of this build and I've deduced the following.

It really does not like fighters. It is more of an issue with the AI really but being attacked by fighters tends to distract the Radiant enough for it to waste its autopulses on them and not the enemy, meaning it can not defeat a full 160 Deployment Points reliably. It did however defeat a 160 Deployment Point contingent made up of 1 Conquest, 2 Onslaughts, 1 Dominator and 1 falcon three times out of four!

I have also weighted my setup options and decided to further modify my design and it seems to perform better across varied combat scenarios:
Spoiler
[close]
1)I actually split the Autopulse Lasers into two weapon groups using the pulses on the turrets and the ones on the hardpoints respectively. The AI actually seems to use all of the shots stored in the 5 weapons reliably despite not being in the same weapon group.
2)I specialized into making the shield as easy and convenient to deploy for the AI as possible by cramming "Stabilized Shields" into the ship aswell. It costs 15OP but actually reduces the shield flux upkeep by 150, meaning it is basically the same as putting in 15 vents assuming the ship is always going to fire while the shields are on. The difference this hullmod seems to make is that the AI will keep the shield up for longer when it reaches high flux capacity as the upkeep of raising the shield is now roughly half the value the ship dissipates hard flux at thanks to the "Shield Modulation" skill.
3)I switched the front LR PD lasers to normal PD lasers since they have better DPS. I would love to also install PD lasers on those empty medium energy slots but they can't actually install anything but medium weapons, a shame really.

Post Scriptum: Ludd Curse you Alex! Axing the Medium Combat Laser and leaving us poor high tech enthustiasts with no medium energy PD options other than the absolutely atrocious Heavy Burst Laser makes my cry in my GammaCore-augmented space-hammock every night!



« Last Edit: April 06, 2021, 04:24:39 AM by Arcagnello »
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Arranging holidays in an embrace with the Starsector is priceless.
The therapist removed my F5 key.