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[Locklave]

It gives you exactly enough for 1 single Radiant with a Gamma core before the absurd 30 point cap is exceeded destroying CR.

So the choice is Special modifications giving your fleet a huge buff and unlocking a 3rd mod slot or 1 Good ship with the worst AI core.

Is this a joke or something? How does anyone pick this and not feel ripped off? Minimum it should be 2 Radiants with 2 Alpha cores for 70% CR. This skill currently isn't even in the same galaxy as Special modifications.

This feels like a placeholder or something. I'm glad a can spec outta this garbage.

[intrinsic_parity]

One alpha core radiant is pretty much all you need to beat almost any fleet. Radiant is pretty OP and absurdly undervalued DP wise. Also you can spam remnant frigates with gunnery implants to get max ECM bonus in every fight, which can be quite valuable. You can basically get 5-6 free officers that way (and cores are better than officers too since they get all elite skills), which is pretty strong. I took special modifications on my first run and this on my second, and honestly, the power level is pretty similar.

[Sutopia]

One alpha core radiant is pretty much all you need to beat almost any fleet. Radiant is pretty OP and absurdly undervalued DP wise. Also you can spam remnant frigates with gunnery implants to get max ECM bonus in every fight, which can be quite valuable. You can basically get 5-6 free officers that way (and cores are better than officers too since they get all elite skills), which is pretty strong. I took special modifications on my first run and this on my second, and honestly, the power level is pretty similar.

On top of that it’s significant less SP investment for automated ships, and automated ships don’t force you to marry it like special modifications do. I’d say Automated ships is actually better in terms of flexibility and cost.

[Locklave]

So it's designed to do frigate spam? But even a Gamma core uses 5 points of 30 alone, not even considering the actual ship.

Also 1 Radiant + Alpha core is over budget costing a hit to base CR.

edit:

5-6 free officers with no ships...

[AcaMetis]

It looks awful compared to Special Modifications and is a right disappointment for anyone who wanted to go full remnant, but it's not really bad once you play around with it. The big thing is that you want maxed out Crew Training for the +15% CR, but with that you can field five Beta Core/six Gamma Core Glimmers with 50% CR and that is nothing to sneeze at. Officer quantity is definitely meta in this version, and five/six officers with all elite skills in solid ships is a huge boon to your ECM/deployment values. Or, you know, deploy a Radiant and just mercilessly brutalize everything. Those guys don't need 100% CR to shine, and neither do the smaller ships...

[Locklave]

I just assumed crew training wouldn't work since it has no crew. Well that's certainly big for it.

[bob888w]

For 40DP, the radiant/lvl 8 officer combo is pretty good. Sure it's no where as good as the flexibility specialMods offers, it's great for RP or for people who don't want micromanage their fleet. 6 tacyions+hardlight modification is your friend

[Locklave]

It only has 1 heavy energy slot so 1 Tachyon. lol I wish 6.

[Hiruma Kai]

I'll point out, CR doesn't mean much until you dip below 40%.  My last RC12 run was crew training + derelict contingent + automated ships.  I was running two Radiants at 42% CR (with 4 d-mods each, in a hull tanking configuration - i.e. shield shunt, related hull mods, and basically 537.5 residual armor).  They didn't really die, and were killing the enemy fine.  Their CR caused them to take the following penalties:
-2% manueverability
-2% damage dealt
+2% damage taken
autofire accuracy: poor

It just doesn't mean all that much - other than preventing multiple deployments.  But if you're desperate, you can spend a story point to bring them back up to acceptable CR in a multiple deployment situation I think.

An alpha core Radiant with 45% CR is much better than a gamma core Radiant with 60% CR, for example.  4 more elite skills is much better than 2% damage tweaks.

What have you tried Radiants up against out of curiosity where they weren't performing enough to be worth it compared to special modifications?  I mean, I've found them to be worth their weight in end game fights.

It only has 1 heavy energy slot so 1 Tachyon. lol I wish 6.

Radiants have 3 large energy, 2 large synergy, 4 medium synergy and 10 small energy slots.  So it is neither 1 nor 6, it's 5 Tachyon lances at most.  But to be honest, they make better flux free missile ships with 3 large energy weapons added.

[Locklave]

My bad I'm looking at Brilliant class, not radiant.

What Redacted frigates do people recommend?

[Megas]

Those guys don't need 100% CR to shine, and neither do the smaller ships...

Radiant may not need full CR, but it is annoying that it cannot go above 50% CR unless I optimize for CR (Get Crew Training and Derelict Contingent).  Efficiency Overhaul is must-have if I want it to recover fast enough to chain battle multiple rounds quickly.  With that said, Radiant can function decently even while CR is in the yellow.

If Special Modifications was not permanent, I would get that instead for three s-mods for the whole fleet and super flagship.  But since Spec. Mods. is permanent and Automated Ships is not, I picked the latter.  Also, it is fun collecting Remnant ships and watching Radiant murder things.  The frigates are also good substitutes for human destroyers earlier in the game.

Radiants have 3 large energy, 2 large synergy, 4 medium synergy and 10 small energy slots.  So it is neither 1 nor 6, it's 5 Tachyon lances at most.  But to be honest, they make better flux free missile ships with 3 energy weapons.

I considered missiles plus three plasma cannons, but decided to try two Paladin PD instead of missiles.  Paladin is very good at snuffing missiles (even Squalls) and light targets without bumping flux use too much (unlike last release).

If Paladin did not work well enough, I would have considered three plasma in turrets and leave large hardpoints empty for more OP, unless I built-in Expanded Missile Racks for lots of missiles.

What Redacted frigates do people recommend?

Lumen is good at survival and will pick off other enemy frigates.  I used them during the midgame, before I reached the Red Planet to loot my first Radiant.

[AcaMetis]

My bad I'm looking at Brilliant class, not radiant.

What Redacted frigates do people recommend?

Well, that'd be a choice between 5DP Glimmers and 4DP Lumens, and of those two I went with Glimmers. Lumens feel very OP starved at 35OP and seem more designed for defence/guerilla tactics, whereas Glimmers bring 50OP to the table and are specced for nothing but pure, in-your-face destruction. I assumed the best defence was a good offence.

[Realm]

Having to use Crew Training to get the best use out of crewless ships feels like bad design in more than a few ways. As it stands, it feels like this skill's limit was designed to cover the possibilities of Gamma-Frigate spam, or a single Alpha-Radiant. Everything else just feels somewhat subpar in overall fleet value compared to Special Modifications; whether you're using it for a couple of Fulgents or Scintillas, or a single good Brilliant.

It doesn't help either that the Explorarium Drones are held back immensely by their abysmal OP, with the Rampart as the 'best' choice still holding rather low terrible potential in most scenarios compared with the competing Brilliant or just a regular Dominator. I never feel any particular inclination to experiment with the Destroyer and Frigate-sized Explorarium Drones, as there's not truly much you can do with such a low OP limit.

On a similar thought, I would also question if the Guardian might ever be recoverable, given there're no larger ships on the high-end of DP costs that compete with the Radiant. I could see a player-usable version having less OP or a weakened Autoforge, but even with the Guardian's current stats a Radiant is extremely strong competition at the same DP cost. I'd just like more viable options to compete with the currently favoured uses of the skill.

Edit: I didn't even consider until now that the Rampart is extremely worse with the Impact Mitigation nerf, previously it could at least function as an aggressive armour-tank when loaded with an Alpha Core and built-in Heavy Armour+Mod of Choice (SO/Bulkheads/whatever you felt like). But raw armour/hull-tanking got a big, big hit with the last hotfix.

[tseikk1]

It doesn't "suck", its problem is it has to compete with special modifications and it can't give too much CR or players with crew training and derelict contingent could field multiple radiants. Thats really it. I wish radiant was nerfed a little, derelict contingent reworked and crew training made to not work on drone ships (due to said ships not having crew). This way Automated Ships could be buffed and made into a really nice skill.

[Berty]

I agree; 30 points is too low, especially given that it is an end of tree skill and, currently, it's vastly inferior to the other tech tier 5 skill.  Having 3 in built mods on each ship is huge.

It should enable the player to take a Radiant battleship with an Alpha core with no malus.  Simply upping the points to 40 would solve this.