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[Arcagnello]

Using the Radiant is by far the best option since it's disgustingly undervalued in the Deployment Points department and it just becomes disgusting with 2-3 integrated hullmods and a Fully Integrated Alpha Officer giving the already broken ship 8 Elite Skills. That said, going 2x Brilliant with Betas or 6-7 Lumens with Gammas is can be preferrable if you want to use more standard capital ships.

Side Note: Oh would you look at this bounty, wonder if I can take it.


Triple paragon is strong, but it is such a damn slow ship I may just be able to murder everything else first and then gang up on them.

[AcaMetis]

What in Ludd's good name is that bounty ? And how is triple Paragon/quad Doom not even worth three times as much as a pirate fleet which doesn't field any capitals, insofar that the Atlas MK. II counts as such?

Beyond that I am looking at the OP and am in the process of taking notes...

[Arcagnello]

What in Ludd's good name is that bounty ? And how is triple Paragon/quad Doom not even worth three times as much as a pirate fleet which doesn't field any capitals, insofar that the Atlas MK. II counts as such?

Beyond that I am looking at the OP and am in the process of taking notes...

So, uh, I went to see what the actual bounty fleet looked like:

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And, spoiler alert, I actually beat it only losing (and then recovering) 3 frigades. I'm actually really surprised. I guess giving the enemy a bad case of extreme sensory overload works wonders against capital-class ships. They won't be firing their weapons or properly using the ship systems most of the time.

I'm currently editing the OP with a detailed battle synopsis but here's some screenshots:
Initial Deployment

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The Donut capital starting to feel really alone there in the middle of the map

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The Donut capital REALLY wishing it had accellerated shields right now

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Enemy can only deploy 135FP worth of stuff after the first Paragon got disabled. That's how disgusting Gamma Core officer stacking plus 10 normal officers can get

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Glimmer actually managing to annoy a Doom long enough for it to overflux itself and get deleted by a double Hurricane from the Conquest

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Spawncamping the filthy phase weebs

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Bullying the second donut while the last doom is having a good old time being chased around by 360 shield frigades wasting its time

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Second Donut being pelted by frigades while it's distracted by the artillery COnquest and carriers. This is why I always suggest giving Paragons Accellerated Shields, Front Shields AND stabilized shields even before considering Hardened Shields, this would not happen so easily.

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Hyperion soloing an officered Doom by itself after it was done with giving the second donut capital the buisness

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Fight result screen. Watching that Last paragon deploy just to immediatelt rout was hilarious.

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Bounty completion and Exp value. Funny how two no-capital 300k bounty fleets paid out more than a single one with 3 paragons and 4 Dooms.

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[Thaago]

Well its interesting... that fleet only has 11 officers, and it looks like they max out at level 5. Thats a pretty weak officer corp, so while the ships are scary looking in the intel-screen, its a significantly weaker fleet than it looks.

Nice fight, thanks for the screenshots!

[Arcagnello]

Well its interesting... that fleet only has 11 officers, and it looks like they max out at level 5. Thats a pretty weak officer corp, so while the ships are scary looking in the intel-screen, its a significantly weaker fleet than it looks.

Nice fight, thanks for the screenshots!

And not only that, why are there officers on the phase frigades and not the Dooms? I don't get the way this new patch does things sometimes. I would rather have the game do away with giving fleets more than 10 officers and apply Integrated Hullmods as the fleet scales instead, starting with the ships costing more Deployment Points first.

It would certainly help with the ECM memes against standard player fleets (and not mine that currently gets around 70% ECM every battle) and make the game a tad more interesting.

[Arcagnello]

Update:
1) I've fought another two big bounties, you'll find them in the OP, they're a Conquest spam fleet and a Hegemony capital spam respetively. I've got to admit the new remnant sub ordos and ordos I started fighting posed a much higher threat than these. I sadly have not gotten a thoroughly screenshotted Remnant Ordo fight but I can assure you I don't trust the AI on autopilot in this Iron Mode Campaign and micro it intensely while also piloting a frigade myself xD

2)I've had to cut the two Gryphons and slap another Conquest in instead, I was too weak in the frontline department and while slow moving enemies are fine and dandy things like

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Remnant Ordos

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were a bit too much. Having an extra pair of Gauss cannons comes in real handy. I also slightly modified the Conquest setup to now have those two mediums slots filled in with Harpoons (guilt for removing he Gryphons) and I finally managed to find 3 Cautious officers for all of them. Don't they just look fabulous (I gave them the aforementioned Harpoons after this Star Fortress Siege)

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I do find them to play the ultra long range Conquests a better than steady/aggressive, "better" in this case meaning that they're less likely to yolo in and only backpedal when they're already nearly overloaded but MORE likely to stay just away enough from the enemy to not fire the Gauss and just spamming the Hurricanes in a 1v1 scanario, altough they do seem to close in and use all their weapons in battle. Do not ask me why.

3)I've found a third Hyperion (I do have good planets with orbital works, but I just have not found its blueprint  <.< ) and due to the fact I FINALLY updated the game version to not take 2.5 million exp for every story point after level 15 I had story points to spare so I fully integrated the Gamma cores on some glimmers AND given them two extra integrated hullmods. It's the campaign's main meme so I better get it endgame ready

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Edit: I've posted this reply prematurely by mistake. I am still in the process of editing the OP!

Edit 2: There, edited the OP

[tseikk1]

You've almost sold me the glimmers. If it only wasn't so much fun watching double radiants blow stuff up with sabots and hammer barrages...

[Arcagnello]

You've almost sold me the glimmers. If it only wasn't so much fun watching double radiants blow stuff up with sabots and hammer barrages...

Glimmer spam is memey and powerful but it really does not hold a candle to Radiant when it comes to sheer firepower. You litterally get 5 large and 4 medium front facing energy/missile weapons (plus a killer ship system and amazing shield coverage) for 40 deployment points.

Radiant is possibly the most undervalued capital ship when it comes to sheer efficiency for deployment points. I would not be surprised to see the entire [Redacted] and Explorarium roster eventually get rebalanced now accounting to the fact the player can use all of their ships.

Radiant would be quite comfortable at a 55-60 FP assuming the Automated Ship Points were also increased to at least deploy one of every ship you can get with the skill. I'd go with 50 instead of the current 30.

Also, how can you run two radiants? Did you raise the Automated Ship Points in the settings or are running them with gamma cores/automated repair unit to counter the inevitable malfunctions in combat?

[Goumindong]

You've almost sold me the glimmers. If it only wasn't so much fun watching double radiants blow stuff up with sabots and hammer barrages...

Glimmer spam is memey and powerful but it really does not hold a candle to Radiant when it comes to sheer firepower. You litterally get 5 large and 4 medium front facing energy/missile weapons (plus a killer ship system and amazing shield coverage) for 40 deployment points.

Radiant is possibly the most undervalued capital ship when it comes to sheer efficiency for deployment points. I would not be surprised to see the entire [Redacted] and Explorarium roster eventually get rebalanced now accounting to the fact the player can use all of their ships.

Radiant would be quite comfortable at a 55-60 FP assuming the Automated Ship Points were also increased to at least deploy one of every ship you can get with the skill. I'd go with 50 instead of the current 30.

Also, how can you run two radiants? Did you raise the Automated Ship Points in the settings or are running them with gamma cores/automated repair unit to counter the inevitable malfunctions in combat?

30% base CI from skill at 100 DP for 2 Radiant + 2 Alpha Cores. +15% from fleet skills. +15% from Alpha AI skills -> 50% CI

[Arcagnello]

You've almost sold me the glimmers. If it only wasn't so much fun watching double radiants blow stuff up with sabots and hammer barrages...

Glimmer spam is memey and powerful but it really does not hold a candle to Radiant when it comes to sheer firepower. You litterally get 5 large and 4 medium front facing energy/missile weapons (plus a killer ship system and amazing shield coverage) for 40 deployment points.

Radiant is possibly the most undervalued capital ship when it comes to sheer efficiency for deployment points. I would not be surprised to see the entire [Redacted] and Explorarium roster eventually get rebalanced now accounting to the fact the player can use all of their ships.

Radiant would be quite comfortable at a 55-60 FP assuming the Automated Ship Points were also increased to at least deploy one of every ship you can get with the skill. I'd go with 50 instead of the current 30.

Also, how can you run two radiants? Did you raise the Automated Ship Points in the settings or are running them with gamma cores/automated repair unit to counter the inevitable malfunctions in combat?

30% base CI from skill at 100 DP for 2 Radiant + 2 Alpha Cores. +15% from fleet skills. +15% from Alpha AI skills -> 50% CI

I read this reply while dizzy and late at night so I stopped myself from replying to it for my own good, sorry for the delay!

I actually went back and searched for the thread where  Alex confirms the Automated Ships' max CR math and it should be the following, neatly organized into an equation by RedHellion

Thanks for the reply Alex!

Ah, I was assuming that the Automated Ships bonus was multiplicative, not another addition. The helper text for bonuses doesn't specify whether they're multiplicative or additional, so I thought this might be one of the multiplicative ones.

And I was thinking that the -100 was essentially being cancelled:
(baseline + crew training + reliability engineering) * automated ships
(70 + 8 + 0) * 0.6 = 46.8

When really you're saying it's this:
baseline + crew training + reliability engineering + automated ships - 100
70 + 8 + 0 + 60 - 100 = 38

Meaning your Brilliants should have: 70+15+15+(100/30)-100=33% Maximum Combat Readiness and not 50%

They would have exactly 50% maximum CR if you raised the Automated Ship Points to 50 instead of 30 tough.

Am I missing something? It might just be because I cut drinking coffee in the morning or something 

Edit: back on the Radiant tough, 4x Sabot MRM 2x Hammer barrage is amazing. It just deletes things. How did you set the rest of it up by the way?

The last time I tried setting a missile-focused Radiant up ended up with the following setup:

Integrated Hullmods: ITU&Hardened Shields (I already set it up to be Autopulse sadly, I would've given it Missile Racks & Hardened Shields otherwise
Additional Hullmods: Expanded Missile Racks, ECCM, Front Shields, Accellerated Shields
Weapons: Mining Lasers on all small energy mounts, 4x Sabot MRMs, 2x Hammer Barrages, 1x Paladin PD on the middle large Mount, 2x Plasma Cannon on the front hardpoints
Rest of the OP: Max Capacitors, rest into vents

I could see it working a lot better with Expanded Missile Racks instead of ITU (which I would not install since the ship NEEDS to get close for its own good). I've also witnessed it working with twin Typhoon Reaper Launchers. They do cost more and are easier to shoot down but they have a lot more potential damage and they got enough ammunition for the entire battle.

I'd also consider swapping that Paladin for a tach lance and the Plasmas for twin Autopulse maybe so that it can presure shields better and hopefully shut down most of the enemy point defence for the Reapers to Strike true.

Edit: You've tempted me into trying Hammer barrage setups on a spare, 3 D-mod Radiant (with the luckiest Gamma Core in existance as officer)I have stored in my home planet and this is the result:

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This Typhoon Reaper Launcher variant is a lot better at deleting smaller ships due to the massive amount of potential damage but struggles against stronger point defence:

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It's actually disgusting under AI control. The lack of ITU ensures the ship gets close to the enemy and the Missile Specialization skill then allows the AI to vomit missiles into the enemy until it is dead. The addittion of a Paladin PD and Double Autopulse was for the sake of flexibility and they can do some great work thanks to Expanded magazines.

What is even scarier about this setup is that it's 100% AI usable since it has no Smods and is able able to murder a sim Paragon in under 30-40 seconds 100% of the time.
First Sabot Salvo

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Second Sabot Salvo

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Third Sabot Salvo

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Fourth Sabot Salvo

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Aaaand it's dead in the next 5 seconds

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It even brutalizes the two sim Onslaughts with a quickness, butchering one while the other is helplessly shooting at the radiant, then backing off to vent only to jump back in and delete the other one. The only requirement for this to happen is for the AI to not switch target every 3 seconds like an indecisive teenager.

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Post Scriptum: Alex, if you're somehow reading this, know that we as a playerbase could supply you with so many absolutely brutal [Redacted] ship setups you could realistically stop having said ships get those awful, autogenerated loadouts (radiant with 3 graviton Beams and 2 Locusts just to name one) and simply have them all cycle between 7-8 highly effective setups each, making one of the (supposedly) endgame threats incredibly dangerous to fight without overwhelming the player with a fleet using 15 Alpha Core Officers.

[tseikk1]

@Arcagnello Derelict Contingent with 5 dmods+ Crew Training + Reliability Engineering is enough to keep my radiants just barely above the water. I'm not at home at the moment and I'm not 100% sure how I built the radiants, but I'll post it once I get back. I remember using a few [MEGA-REDACTED] things on them though.

[Arcagnello]

@Arcagnello Derelict Contingent with 5 dmods+ Crew Training + Reliability Engineering is enough to keep my radiants just barely above the water. I'm not at home at the moment and I'm not 100% sure how I built the radiants, but I'll post it once I get back. I remember using a few [MEGA-REDACTED] things on them though.

Ah! Derelict Contingent! That's what I was missing, I never even considered it! 2 Alpha Core Radiants sit at 33% Combat Readiness with all the bonuses but DC, meaning you would only need 3 D-mods each for them to get above the Malfunction theshold (provided your fleet does not go above 180 DP and starts cutting into Crew Training)!

*takes notes for the campaign after the next one*

[tseikk1]

So here's my radiant loadouts: 2 hammer barrages and 4 sabot pods (obviously), front large energy hardpoints autopulse lasers, front turret

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volatile particle driver

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back energy turrets empty, front small energy turrets

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shock repeaters

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. hullmods: integrated heavy armor and hardened shields, ITU, expanded magazines, shield conversion:front, resistant flux conduits, expanded missile racks, ECCM package. This build is one of the best I've created for the radiant, and better than the 5 autopulse variant for all but the longest of fights, including the [MEGA-REDACTED] bounty.

Spoiler

Mine soloed a tesseract. Had the rest of my fleet killing one, while this killed the other. split off two of its aspects as well before the rest of the fleet came to help, it could probably solo the entire thing if given time.

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radiants really like to vent in front of enemy faces, so heavy armor and resistant flux conduits are almost mandatory in my opinion. ITU it could probably do without, but I found it really helps with the spoiler energy smalls. could maybe just replace them with ion cannons for almost the same effect though.

the rest of my fleet is all reckless or aggressive officers in 3 overridden champions (had to get more hammer barrages, I've really started liking that weapon), 2 overridden hyperions, 1 non-overridden hyperion I pilot myself, 2 afflictors and 3 tempests. In hindsight auroras and furies would probably be more effective than champions, but they couldn't equip the hammer barrage. Could also switch the afflictors for more tempests or maybe scarabs, hyperions can capture points well enough.

Yes this build is a bit cheesy with derelict contingent, double radiants, build in SO's etc. but it's so far the only build I've managed to defeat the [MEGA-REDACTED] bounty with.

[Burvjradzite]

So, I've actually have try to test your build idea. I kinda screw my build since it's my first 0.95 vanilla game, and about 5th in total. I made a terrible mistake choosing not 10 level 5 officers, but 8 level 6 officers and i tried, as usual do double astrals and tempests spam, the ol' reliable, for me at least. In turns out it doesn't work so well now (I mean star fortresses are falling just fine, but remnants...), then i swapped to a phase fleets with harbringers, it doesnt end well also, then i find your topic. All said before just to clarify that your main idea of frigate spam wolf pack tactics works even without all pristine conditions. Magnificent. The amount of sheer joy overflow me once more in this game (the first one was a tempest spam back then). And I was like, hmmm, then i definetly should start my game over and do it perfectly this time. I think i shoud build my skills 0-9-5-1 — i think about it this way, what's better the third build in or second elite skill on officers.

So my questions is:
1) Why glimmer has two ir pulse on the rear instead of the front? That's the most important question.
2) If running without BSO, what should i change apart from fluxheavy firepower, and will it still work? Frigates with 700+ PPT are very powerful on their own. Should I consider aggresive officers instead of reckless?
3) I mainly fighting remnants and build all my fleets around it, what would you change in the loadouts, i mean, can it be more specialized for fighting ordos?
4) Please do explain how linked/alternative weapon groups influence behavior of a ship in combat, i hear about it first time.
5) Another big question about helsmanship, it seems lacking value over the effect of SO, is helsmanship 100% musthave? I feel SO by itself kinda overrides it, or do you think every last bit of speed is needed?
6) I run 5 glimmers with beta cores instead of 6 glimmers with gamma cores — same worth of AI DP. Your thoughts?
7) So after all about hyperion build: is it ion bean or ion pulser still? Heavy Machine Gun feels very nice tho.

I'm sorry for asking so much questions simultaneously, i hope you find time to answer at least some of it. Thanks.

[Arcagnello]

We did it guys, we ruined Safety Overrides for everyone else thru sheer meme power!

I guess I'll have to start a new campaign now that the main theme of this campaign can't work anymore. I wonder how the game even handles trying to load a game with built in SO... if it even can...

I'll update another last fight ( eventually, spoiler territory) and that will be the last goodbye to the cocaine-squirrel fleet. For now. You will be missed

So, I've actually have try to test your build idea. I kinda screw my build since it's my first 0.95 vanilla game, and about 5th in total. I made a terrible mistake choosing not 10 level 5 officers, but 8 level 6 officers and i tried, as usual do double astrals and tempests spam, the ol' reliable, for me at least. In turns out it doesn't work so well now (I mean star fortresses are falling just fine, but remnants...), then i swapped to a phase fleets with harbringers, it doesnt end well also, then i find your topic. All said before just to clarify that your main idea of frigate spam wolf pack tactics works even without all pristine conditions. Magnificent. The amount of sheer joy overflow me once more in this game (the first one was a tempest spam back then). And I was like, hmmm, then i definetly should start my game over and do it perfectly this time. I think i shoud build my skills 0-9-5-1 — i think about it this way, what's better the third build in or second elite skill on officers.

So my questions is:
1) Why glimmer has two ir pulse on the rear instead of the front? That's the most important question.
2) If running without BSO, what should i change apart from fluxheavy firepower, and will it still work? Frigates with 700+ PPT are very powerful on their own. Should I consider aggresive officers instead of reckless?
3) I mainly fighting remnants and build all my fleets around it, what would you change in the loadouts, i mean, can it be more specialized for fighting ordos?
4) Please do explain how linked/alternative weapon groups influence behavior of a ship in combat, i hear about it first time.
5) Another big question about helsmanship, it seems lacking value over the effect of SO, is helsmanship 100% musthave? I feel SO by itself kinda overrides it, or do you think every last bit of speed is needed?
6) I run 5 glimmers with beta cores instead of 6 glimmers with gamma cores — same worth of AI DP. Your thoughts?
7) So after all about hyperion build: is it ion bean or ion pulser still? Heavy Machine Gun feels very nice tho.

I'm sorry for asking so much questions simultaneously, i hope you find time to answer at least some of it. Thanks.

1) I put the IR pulses in the back because those are turrets, while the ones at the front are hardpoints. It's to better shoot enemy fighters.

3) WHat is BSO, I suck at acronyms. Do you mean Safety Overrides? In that case you can probably run your glimmers with an Ion beam, 4 taclasers, turret gyros, PDAI, unstable injector and Advance Optics, plus of course the shield ods needed to give it 360 shielding. You might be able to fit all that with some integrated hullmods. It will make for a very annoying and kity frigade that provides fire support, hopefully from afar and for a long time aswell!

4) basically, the AI is an indecisive child when choosing weapon groups. The more weapon groups you give it and the more it will fiddle with them instead of keeping them all on autofire, even if it has enough flux to fire all of them indefinetly. Reducing weapon groups to the minimum, sometimes even linking turret weapons with hardpoint weapons (running the hazard of having the hardpoints waste ammo) makes sure the ship fire everything whenever it is in range, all the time.

5)helsmanship improves top speed by 10% and handling by 50% when not elite, this means that a ship with the majority of its weapons put into frontal hardpoints is going to keep them on target a lot easier, drastically improving its offensive capability, Elite HElsmanship is much more useful on non SO ships as you said, but the base bonuses are good enough to take it regardless. It's useful on the Glimmer because it's an offensive focused frigade with mediocre speed and no Phase Skimmer. being faster and more agile drastically improves its survivability.

6)I used gamma cores for the simple reason that I could get all the skills I wanted with just the gamma cores, which mean having one more ship and therefore more ECM overall. Beta cores do improve a lot more skills, which makes your decision arguably better if you want each one of your glimmers more potent and survivable!

7)Ion Pulser is the superior weapon for anything fighting at close range. It does hard flux damage, can deal disgusting amounts of burst damage usually bursting down frigades in seconds and even has a special effect dealing extra damage upon hitting hull. Ion beam is a support, long range weapon and you should pick that overt he pulser if you want to play the kite game.

I hope this was useful, good luck out there in the new, not Overridden Patch!