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[pairedeciseaux]

Have you guys encountered NPC fleets with strange ship loadouts?

This one, I don't remember exactly, maybe it was a personal bounty or contact bounty mission.

• Somewhat strong fighter presence
• Weapons looks OK on Drovers and Centurion
• This Mora is scary, 5 front facing Light Needlers + 2 Typhoon Reaper Launchers
• Point Defense Paragon!
• Point Defense Tempest!

Screenshot:

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[Nameless]

I reckon PD Paragon is actually quite good lol.

[Thaago]

... you know I rely on missiles so much right now that Paragon would actually be a right pain in the butt for me to kill. New guardians are solid. I think if the front two larges were guns of some sort, or the gravitons were guns, then it would be pretty ok. As it stands its just not going to kill anything, so I suppose I'd kill it with heavy mortars eventually.

[IonDragonX]

PD weapons will shoot ships if they have nothing better to do. The built-in Advanced Targeting Core means those Paladins are still a range of 1200. Not great for a Paragon but still terrifying to the "moar frigates" fleets.

[Megas]

Last release, Paladin PD as an assault option for Paragon could have been decent if the flux cost was not so expensive that it overloaded Paragon.  I have not played with Paladin much this release yet.  (I am just trying to survive with what I found so far.)

[Voyager I]

Think the Paladins in the forward hardpoints transcend this from emergent gameplay to art.

[Daynen]

There are officer skills and hullmods that can make that Paladin fairly formidable at surprising ranges on a Paragon.  Reapers are almost destined to fail against that and good luck getting a bombing run off unless you have GROSSLY superior numbers of carriers.  It might not burn your fleets to ash in an instant but that thing will hold out for DAYS if you don't have just the right stuff.

[prav]

Paladin has a fairly high "beam" rating, as high as the Tachlance (which is primarily considered "energy", not "beam").

Maybe it shouldn't have, or maybe it should have better sustained performance to match the expectations, but I believe that's why the autofitter likes putting it everywhere. Same thing with the burst lasers, they're used as downgrades from eg Phase Lances.

Regardless, I think we can all agree that this is peak perfomance:

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[Alliostra]

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I suppose it's not too bad, but still...

[Arcagnello]

Explain this one to me ladies and gentlemen:

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Not that a 100% meta build for that Conquest would save it anyway against an Overridden Hyperion (heh), but using Thumpers on the Large Weapon Mounts and an Annihalator Rocket Pod on the Large Missile Hardpoint is just....no.

Warning! Potentially controversial opinion ahead!

Spoiler

I would just hack the entire "Autofit" concept off the game entirely and have enemy ships cycle through various, tried and true, varied and effective loadouts instead.
Different factions would use a different set of loadouts of the same ship based on the ship hullmods,weapons, fighter LPC blueprints and even officer personalities avaiable to them.
It would take quite the amount of work, but I'm pretty confident it's possible to give each and every ship in the game a varied set of 4, 5 effective loadouts for it to choose from.
It would of course make the game more challenging, but I'd rather have that than searching for a bounty comprised of 10 Conquest Battlecruisers expecting a pitched battle just to take a look at their setups and feeling like putting "differently effective" battlecruisers out of their misery.
As I've said in a Twitch chat streaming Starsector: "All ship designs are good at something, this one for example is really good at doing nothing and then exploding!"
I hope this is not percieved as elitism of any kind. Anyone that ever completed at least one campaign in Starsector must have looked at an Autofitted enemy ship and said "damn, that's sad" at least one time. It needs to be better.

[close]

[TaLaR]

Explain this one to me ladies and gentlemen:

Spoiler

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Seems just random without any rhyme or reason.

Not that a 100% meta build for that Conquest would save it anyway against an Overridden Hyperion (heh), but using Thumpers on the large weapon mounts is just....no.

Just put efficient short range kinetics in all ballistic slots, IR pulse in energy slots and Locusts in large missile slots.

[Arcagnello]

Explain this one to me ladies and gentlemen:

Spoiler

[close]

Seems just random without any rhyme or reason.

Not that a 100% meta build for that Conquest would save it anyway against an Overridden Hyperion (heh), but using Thumpers on the large weapon mounts is just....no.

Just put efficient short range kinetics in all ballistic slots, IR pulse in energy slots and Locusts in large missile slots.

Man how much I wish I saw attack versions of the Conquest doing that! Imagine a conquest using IR lasers on all small energy mounts, dual flaks on the medium mounts plus a Storm Needler and a Hephaestus Assault gun on each side.  Ah, the poor player driven frigades if said Conquest also had something like Dual Locust on the large missiles and dual Sabot MRM pod on the mediums...

I have not experimented that yet but the AI can even handle a Conquest using two Hammer Barrages in the large missile slots and Mk.9 Autocannons on either side if it also has Aux Thrusters and an officer with the Helsmanship skill. Beyblade Beyblade!

[KDR_11k]

Explain this one to me ladies and gentlemen:

Spoiler

[close]

Not that a 100% meta build for that Conquest would save it anyway against an Overridden Hyperion (heh), but using Thumpers on the Large Weapon Mounts and an Annihalator Rocket Pod on the Large Missile Hardpoint is just....no.

Warning! Potentially controversial opinion ahead!

Spoiler

I would just hack the entire "Autofit" concept off the game entirely and have enemy ships cycle through various, tried and true, varied and effective loadouts instead.
Different factions would use a different set of loadouts of the same ship based on the ship hullmods,weapons, fighter LPC blueprints and even officer personalities avaiable to them.
It would take quite the amount of work, but I'm pretty confident it's possible to give each and every ship in the game a varied set of 4, 5 effective loadouts for it to choose from.
It would of course make the game more challenging, but I'd rather have that than searching for a bounty comprised of 10 Conquest Battlecruisers expecting a pitched battle just to take a look at their setups and feeling like putting "differently effective" battlecruisers out of their misery.
As I've said in a Twitch chat streaming Starsector: "All ship designs are good at something, this one for example is really good at doing nothing and then exploding!"
I hope this is not percieved as elitism of any kind. Anyone that ever completed at least one campaign in Starsector must have looked at an Autofitted enemy ship and said "damn, that's sad" at least one time. It needs to be better.

[close]

That looks like it tried to autofit the Elite pattern with a collection of guns from a single salvage run. Maybe it's supposed to simulate the captain's stash of good guns running out.

[pairedeciseaux]

I've encountered plenty of Conquest with such loadouts. Indeed if such captain has to outfit a dozen of Conquests, maybe it's inevitable that there won't be enough serious weapons left for ships. 

I've also encountered Hammerhead with small guns on the medium hardpoints.

[Nameless]

So I just tried to actually do a full PD paragon with all the hull mods being mitigating damage and that is for sure one hell of a nuisance to deal with. I think I found my new flagship.