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Author Topic: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?  (Read 4967 times)

Megas

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How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« on: April 06, 2021, 07:09:14 PM »

With objectives as they are, it seems frigates may be needed to capture, since bigger ships cost more DP to deploy.

After fighting some more 200k level bounties or equivalent, I find myself deploying frigates to capture points, but my frigates (with bonus PPT only from Industry 2) are running out of PPT too quickly.  Without s-mods, they do not have the OP to afford Hardened Subsystems.

I am reluctant to bite the bullet and sacrifice Combat for Wolfpack Tactics (and possibly Crew Training), just so my frigates can long enough in a fight.

I do not want to give up Technology or Industry (Field Repairs is the only thing that makes casualties somewhat tolerable, since I do not have unlimited money or story points).
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« Reply #1 on: April 06, 2021, 07:26:11 PM »

I did not have wolfpack tactics for 90% of the game, and I was doing fine. I built my fleet to be very aggressive (all aggressive officers, high damage output loadouts, ships with lots of speed etc.), and tried to kill things asap (I had a SO flagship). I didn't find that limited me in terms of killing standard bounties (all the way up to 300k+), it's just the very high end contact bounties and remnant fleets after they scale up a lot that become challenging. I dropped the top couple industry skills recently to get wolfpack tactics plus additional max CR (the supply reduction caps at 100, and I have infinite money at this point for restoring, so the skills were much less impactful at that point) and while it's nice, I don't think it's required. I do think industry becomes a lot worse in the very late game though. 

To be honest, once the frigates cap objectives and you get your fleet in play, they've done their job. They do a decent job of spreading out the enemy after that, but the main goal is already achieved. I also found that letting them run over on CR a little was not a big deal, frigates don't cost very many supplies, even to repair to full, compared to mid-late game salvage.

I will say that putting a few officers in frigates make a big difference, even if you don't have wolfpack tactics. You can get extra PPT from the officers skills, and they are generally much less likely to die.
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Rauschkind

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Re: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« Reply #2 on: April 06, 2021, 07:56:50 PM »

i love the tempest as officer frigate. 8 dp is a lot for such a tiny ship, but it packs a surprising punch with two puls lasers and 1x2 atropos torpedos. having drones it also benefits from the strike commander skill that is much more popular among my officers then i am willing to field carriers.
doesnt even need hard mods to shine. really tough little ship - probably because of the crazy high base speed.
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Thaago

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Re: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« Reply #3 on: April 06, 2021, 08:18:28 PM »

In my first playthrough (low tech battle line plus mid tech escorts) I did not use wolfpack tactics: I opted for the speed bonus from nav instead to help boost my destroyer line. I ended up taking Hardened Subsystems off my frigates, because fights keep ending fast enough that they don't tick down much and I'd rather have more performance. This is including endgame 7+ capital bounties and remnant fleets.

In general I'm finding endgame fights to be significantly faster this version because of the various damage boosts (though it can be hard to pin down remnants, they're quite slippery when they decide to retreat). Mid range combat has taken a bit of a relative hit, but energy brawlers, sniper cruisers/caps, and missile volume are all up. I haven't used SO at all this version because I haven't felt like it, but other have shown how good it is.

Second playthrough I'm using wolfpack and a high tech fleet, but mainly for the damage boost instead of the PPT. Fights are going exceptionally fast, though I'm still early game and armor tanks can take a while to chew through (need to get some heavy hitters). We'll see how endgame feels with a high tech lineup!
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Steven Shi

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Re: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« Reply #4 on: April 06, 2021, 08:24:46 PM »

I skipped wolfpack quite easily. Frigates just don't have the staying power compared to larger ships and yes, they end up mostly used to just capture points in major fleet battles.

With the AI's tendency to bunch up to cover each other, you just don't have the opportunity to swarm a larger ship like a submarine wolf pack. The nail in the coffin is the 30-ship fleet limit - cheaper supply cost doesn't matter if you can't win. 
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Arcagnello

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Re: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« Reply #5 on: April 06, 2021, 08:32:53 PM »

I am playing a Phase ship heavy fleet in this second vanilla campaign and I'm going to pick up both systems expertise and automated ships to be able to field officered Glimmer/lumens AND combine them with wolfpack. It should hopefully get as Disgusting as I hope it does.

P.S: The Hyperion is a 15 Deployment Points superfrigade and an officer that has made the Helmsmanship skill elite can actually teleport around with it all the time, to devastating effects. I am surprised no one mentioned how disgustingly strong a pack of those are!
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Rauschkind

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Re: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« Reply #6 on: April 06, 2021, 09:11:50 PM »

but how often can that hyperion fight? i think its kind of useless to clear a sector. might missing something, but i stay clear of ships with so high cr costs.
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Baqar79

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Re: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« Reply #7 on: April 06, 2021, 10:22:32 PM »

I'm finding this newer version of the game much more difficult combat wise compared to 0.91a, which can be a good thing, but does require me to move beyond my standard comfortable loadouts that wreck fleets.  Paragon's used to be amongst my favourite ships for dealing with Remnant forces, but doesn't seem to do that well any more, at least with my old loadouts.

However my fully officered Hyperion's have the best survivability in my current fleet, much better than my bigger ships like the Doom or Paragon.  I've been trying to find capitals that can work well against the Remnant forces, but I haven't had any luck with the Paragon/Odyssey/Doom. 

Hyperion has a peak performance of 120 seconds normally:
-Hardened Subsystems (hull mod): +60 seconds
-Wolfpack Tactics (skill requires officers): +120 seconds
-Crew Training (skill): +30 seconds (while under 180 recovery cost points)
-Reliability engineering (officer skill): +60 seconds
-Systems expertise (officer skill - elite required):  +30 seconds

That can give up to 420 seconds of peak operating time and the CR degradation should be fairly slow as well (I'm sitting at 375 seconds myself as I don't have any officers with the elite skill of Systems expertise and my fleet is larger than the 180 recovery cost points).  It isn't at capital class levels, but since they are fast with Phase Teleporter you can let your CR run down fairly low before needing to order a retreat.  I myself often have Hyperion's still in battle by the time my Doom's hit their peak time (even with 738 seconds peak performance the acceleration under Phase eats at this quicker).

I've been having a lot of trouble with bringing down Radiants with the 2 Dooms and the Ziggurat (all with fully upgraded officers).  The Paragon just dies horribly (escorts aren't working well at the moment which I think could be due to ECM which Alex bought up in I *think* the main thread), so I don't deploy this unless their forces have been thinned out.  For one Remnant battle, I set my 4 Hyperion's (myself with with three level 6 officers) against a single Brilliant and they destroyed it with no losses; I'm now a big convert to Hyperion's as end game ships, even if they don't pack the damage of a capital they are excellent at harrassing the enemy (due to their hardiness combining fantastic shields, a deep flux pool and the ability to teleport away when in danger with the helmsmanship elite skill).
« Last Edit: April 06, 2021, 10:39:51 PM by Baqar79 »
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SCC

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Re: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« Reply #8 on: April 06, 2021, 10:41:14 PM »

I'm doing fine with just a couple of frigates and without wolfpack tactics. If I had more Omens, then maybe I would put some officers on them, but as it is, my paragon + 4 cruiser + 6 destroyer + 4 frigate fleet is doing fine.

TaLaR

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Re: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« Reply #9 on: April 06, 2021, 10:53:58 PM »

Imo, the best way compose fleet right now is 240 DP of capitals + frigates, all with officers and with WT skill.

Wolfpack is better than CM, because CM without WT is basically impossible to properly leverage. Either you have too short PPT frigates that provide CM bonus only for only third to half of whole fight, or you have to deploy 6-7 of DEs for CM bonus. Which doesn't leave enough officers for capitals and DEs are the weakest size class of 0.95 anyway.
Double-dipping Leadership to get both is non-starter. 5 in tech is basically mandatory, so 7 in Leadership would mean that player will be left much weaker than any basic officer in personal skills.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2021, 10:56:59 PM by TaLaR »
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bob888w

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Re: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« Reply #10 on: April 06, 2021, 11:49:40 PM »

I've also seen a lot of success with hyperions. If given the capture or retreat orders they just teleport to their designated location in a few seconds flat, great for early rushes, and you can retreat them if you prefer playing with other ships. Trouble is their low CR peak time and the fact the ai stay too far away. I've kind of fixed this by slapping aggressive officers and assault chainguns as the loadout which actually makes the AI Tp behind in fights
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Baqar79

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Re: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« Reply #11 on: April 07, 2021, 12:08:02 AM »

I've also seen a lot of success with hyperions. If given the capture or retreat orders they just teleport to their designated location in a few seconds flat, great for early rushes, and you can retreat them if you prefer playing with other ships. Trouble is their low CR peak time and the fact the ai stay too far away. I've kind of fixed this by slapping aggressive officers and assault chainguns as the loadout which actually makes the AI Tp behind in fights
Systems Expertise gives you a +50% increase in teleport range and reduces the cooldown by 33% so despite being limited to 120 DP in many cases, it's not too difficult to get more DP (60 additional points?) by capturing nav points with Hyperions.

I agree that the Hyperion's CR peak time is pretty low (even with Hardened Subsystems), at least without officers; which is why I don't have more Hyperion's in my fleet (as that would also mean firing other officers to make room).

The Hyperion AI straying too far from a goal seems to be a problem I have a lot.  Whether capturing nav points, escorting a target or given an attack order they tend to be rather stubborn in carrying out the command.  I have started flagging enemy targets nearby with the "avoid" command to try an coax them into carrying out their blasted orders.

But when the AI does get itself together they very effectively fight together against partially shielded opponents.  Seeing one draw the shield forward while others take advantage by teleporting to positions around the unshielded portion of the hull is rather satisfying to see.
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sotanaht

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Re: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« Reply #12 on: April 07, 2021, 12:21:00 AM »

I'm finding this newer version of the game much more difficult combat wise compared to 0.91a, which can be a good thing, but does require me to move beyond my standard comfortable loadouts that wreck fleets.  Paragon's used to be amongst my favourite ships for dealing with Remnant forces, but doesn't seem to do that well any more, at least with my old loadouts.

However my fully officered Hyperion's have the best survivability in my current fleet, much better than my bigger ships like the Doom or Paragon.  I've been trying to find capitals that can work well against the Remnant forces, but I haven't had any luck with the Paragon/Odyssey/Doom. 

Hyperion has a peak performance of 120 seconds normally:
-Hardened Subsystems (hull mod): +60 seconds
-Wolfpack Tactics (skill requires officers): +120 seconds
-Crew Training (skill): +30 seconds (while under 180 recovery cost points)
-Reliability engineering (officer skill): +60 seconds
-Systems expertise (officer skill - elite required):  +30 seconds

That can give up to 420 seconds of peak operating time and the CR degradation should be fairly slow as well (I'm sitting at 375 seconds myself as I don't have any officers with the elite skill of Systems expertise and my fleet is larger than the 180 recovery cost points).  It isn't at capital class levels, but since they are fast with Phase Teleporter you can let your CR run down fairly low before needing to order a retreat.  I myself often have Hyperion's still in battle by the time my Doom's hit their peak time (even with 738 seconds peak performance the acceleration under Phase eats at this quicker).

I've been having a lot of trouble with bringing down Radiants with the 2 Dooms and the Ziggurat (all with fully upgraded officers).  The Paragon just dies horribly (escorts aren't working well at the moment which I think could be due to ECM which Alex bought up in I *think* the main thread), so I don't deploy this unless their forces have been thinned out.  For one Remnant battle, I set my 4 Hyperion's (myself with with three level 6 officers) against a single Brilliant and they destroyed it with no losses; I'm now a big convert to Hyperion's as end game ships, even if they don't pack the damage of a capital they are excellent at harrassing the enemy (due to their hardiness combining fantastic shields, a deep flux pool and the ability to teleport away when in danger with the helmsmanship elite skill).
I run SO Hyperions in my fleet, and as my flagship.  Most large battles end right around when they hit malfunction CR (40%).  With SO, they can teleport any time since they have 0 flux boost permanently.  They can also handle Heavy Blasters as well, thanks to all the OP saved by making SO built-in.

I don't bother with objectives at all though, ever.  I might capture one if I'm passing through, but I never give the order to do so and never attempt to hold it.  I don't give a crap about ECM since I'm ALWAYS going to be on the losing end of that unless the enemy fleet is so tiny that I don't even bother deploying my capitals anyway.  Command points don't matter to me, and while speed is always nice, 5% isn't worth the effort.  I do head for them early because I know the enemy likes to split off a smaller force to at least one objective, which gives me the opportunity to kill the weaker force.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2021, 12:24:41 AM by sotanaht »
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Baqar79

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Re: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« Reply #13 on: April 07, 2021, 12:33:48 AM »

I run SO Hyperions in my fleet, and as my flagship.  Most large battles end right around when they hit malfunction CR (40%).  With SO, they can teleport any time since they have 0 flux boost permanently.  They can also handle Heavy Blasters as well, thanks to all the OP saved by making SO built-in.
I had to go check and make sure that SO didn't just apply to the base peak CR time (it applies to the overall time unfortunately, so 375 seconds becomes 124 seconds for me; or 64 seconds without an officer and with Hardened Subsystems). 

I've never really used SO, but having the teleport limit only dependent on the cooldown makes the Hyperion rather nice to fly around.  Maybe something to deploy later in the battle to help clear things up or recapture lost nav points; overall it's rather neat to learn about the 0 flux permanent boost (I don't use SO so I'm not all that familiar with it).

I should add that for the first time, I used the Operations Center hull mod by integrating it into my Hyperion giving a +350% regeneration rate (+100% from Wolfpack Tactics), so I do have a large number of command points to spend and can fairly regularly change orders (if my officer commanded Hyperion's would listen to my orders!).
« Last Edit: April 07, 2021, 12:38:44 AM by Baqar79 »
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Megas

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Re: How important are Frigates and Wolfpack Tactics?
« Reply #14 on: April 07, 2021, 04:56:03 AM »

I will say that putting a few officers in frigates make a big difference, even if you don't have wolfpack tactics. You can get extra PPT from the officers skills, and they are generally much less likely to die.
This is the Industry R2 skill, yes?  That alone is not enough.  To get enough time I feel pressured to get Wolfpack Tactics, add s-mods for Hardened Subsystems, and/or sacrifice my Radiant for three Lumens.  I guess I will integrate Hardened Subsystems into my Tempests and maybe Centurions.

Without Wolfpack, frigates feel like missiles.  They capture points, and I hope I can finish a fight fast enough.  If I do not (which is true more often than not), they run out of PPT and bleed CR.  If I need to retreat my frigates, I need to burn about two CP (because they do not all time out at the same time).

Even if frigates do their job early, retreating them when they run out of PPT/CR in nearly every late-game fight is a huge annoyance (more obligatory fleet micromanagement).  I do not like having to reserve CP to move frigates off the field.

Of course, with Field Repairs, maybe I can get Wolfpack and a bunch of disposable frigates, then send them off to die.  Wolfpack guarantees recovery of frigates, and Field Repairs reduces d-mods for my ships lost in battle.  (However, I want Combat 5, and doing that means no Leadership for my Tech and Industry character.)

I am beginning to agree with TaLaR, the fleet needs a mix of big ships and frigates.  Destroyers seem left behind, and fighters were weakened too much for late-game.  I have dumped my Drover and Condor for more frigates.  Kept Heron, though.

I am shying away from Leadership 4 because I do not want to lock my skills into them.  (I took Automated Ships over Spec.Mods. for similar reasons.)
« Last Edit: April 07, 2021, 04:58:05 AM by Megas »
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