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Hiruma Kai

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Low tech doctrine play through comments
« on: April 25, 2021, 01:19:19 PM »

So I've essentially gotten to the end game with a low tech style play through, and wanted to share some thoughts based on that experience.  Now, a lot of these comments have likely been said in different ways by others, but I wanted them all together in one place to explain the entire impact on a style.

First off, I probably should explain what I mean by low tech style.

I consider the low tech combat ships to be the Lasher, Condor, Enforcer, Dominator, Mora, Onslaught, Legion.  These tend to be high armor for their tier, 1.0 shield efficiency, many ballistic mounts (often oversized), plentiful missile mounts, excellent peak operating time, poor flux dissipation, low to average flux capacity, relatively slow and less manueverable than others in their class, and ship systems on the weaker end of the scale (i.e. burn drive).  The basic idea is low tech uses efficient long range ballistics, backed up by flux free missile pressure to compensate for it's poor flux stats, and uses armor to mitigate the fact they can't really retreat well when over fluxed.  If they're unable to kill a faster/shorter range ship as it keeps diving in and out, they eventually out last it's PPT.  Archetypal and simple to use line ships. 

Alternatively, they can go safety overrides and use short range high DPS ballistics on cruisers and smaller, taking advantage of their PPT and using it to mitigate their low base flux dissipation.  SO can help, but it is not a complete panacea.  The biggest issue with SO, is even with the 50 0-flux boost and the base speed boost, the cruisers and destroyers still often can't control their distance sufficiently against smaller ships, potentially making the reduced range a problem.  High tech ships also tend to get more out of SO in absolute terms, in terms of more absolute flux dissipation, and an even higher top speed.

I will note the Gremlin is technically low tech combat ship, but is also a phase ship, and so doesn't fit the standard low tech "style".  In addition an Afflictor, at 8 DP, is just straight up better version of the Gremlin at 6 DP.  My guess is it was mainly intended as a "pirate" phase ship - overall weaker than standard combat ships of the same class.

Ok, so those are the basic low tech style pros and cons.  What were the changes between 0.9.1a and 0.9.5a?

In 0.9.5a, the Onslaught and Enforcer received significant buffs, along with heavy armor.  A new tanking skill plus hull mod was also introduced. 

1) The Enforcer went from 750 to 900 armor (20% more), it's shield efficiency went from 1.2 to 1.0 (another 20% swing), and finally hull went from 5000 to 6000 (another 20% boost).  Essentially, the Enforcer became straight up 20% tougher.

2) The Onslaught gained some more subtle changes.  0.6 Flux efficiency on TPCs, heavy ballistics integration at the cost of no more overlapping field of fire for 5 large weapons mounts (2 to the sides or 3 to the front now).  Essentially, more OP to play with and better flux management.

3) The heavy armor hull mod was buffed in the amount it provides, an extra 50 armor for frigates, and an extra 100 for all other tiers.  (Enforcer with heavy armor went from 950 to 1200, 26% buff).

4) Derelict contingent and shield shunt.  As far as I can tell, this is the only way to realistically make the low tech style competitive with the strongest end game challenges and the strongest ships from other doctrines, like the Doom.  Get 5 d-mod ships and rely on 350-700 residual armor, and not quite quadruple hull points.  Of course, this skill has issues noted elsewhere and is going to get reworked, so knowing that, I purposely avoided it this play through (and had used it on a previous double Radiant run). Because of the expected nerfing, I'm going to ignore it's existence for the rest of this post.

Those were the changes which helped the low tech style.  What changes hurt it?

1) Many officer/player armor skills were removed or weakened, the only one being strengthened (Impact mitigation armor damage taken -20% to -25%) is only about a 10% buff, which doesn't make up for much larger other factors (85%->90%, +50% armor for calculations, +150 armor for calculations) being removed.  Shield tanking at a minimum was essentially left alone, or made better depending on how you view flux changes.  I will note, low tech style ships benefits from the shield improvements - but at a relatively lower rate.

Imagine your "tanking" budget is 80% shield, 20% armor for high tech, and 50% shield, 50% armor for low tech.  Now if armor is weakened by a factor of 2, then high tech is 80% shield, 10% armor (effectiveness) for 90% of what is was, and low tech is 50% shield, 25% armor (effectiveness) for 75% of what is was.

In any case, a well tanked low-tech ship in 0.9.1a took many more officer skills, but in turn received a  correspondingly significant improvement in longevity, especially against non-officered enemy ships.

2) Many more enemy officers indirectly means more damage per shot or better PD (and in the case of Remnants, both), which are bad for armor tanking (armor is weaker against larger individual shots) or heavy missile use respectively.  The expectation is now (for end game fleets) that more ships have officers than not, where as 2/3 of an end game fleet in 0.9.1a might not have officers.  While shields also see an uptick in damage, they have a linear scaling with DPS.  Armor has a faster than linear scaling and weakens faster as DPS goes up with shot size.

3) Buffs to energy based PD makes mid and high tech slightly harder to force back with missiles, as they've become more flux efficient, reducing the effectiveness of the medium missile pods many low tech ships rely on to buy themselves breathing space.  In many cases, you also have to launch from closer now if Paladin's are on the field, which directly negates the ranged advantage of ballistics that low tech is relying on.  This is mostly a subtle and small effect (except for Paladins), but it is there.

4) Low tech relies on a ballistic PD screen to help protect against HE missiles when the shields need to be down for flux reasons.  By design, that lowering of shields happens more for low tech than other doctrines.  Putting the PD skill across from the universal damage skill has a larger impact on low tech ships than high tech.  An optimized omni-shield tanking ship doesn't really need to think about shooting down high explosive or fragmentation damage missiles, as it is intended to take those on it's shield (and elite shield modulation makes that even easier).  The really only threatening missile to officers focusing on shields is the sabot, which for many smaller ships fires off it's second stage from beyond PD range anyways.

5) Low tech is relying on armor and hull to survive, and you used to be able to get 50% free repairs fleet wide, and up to 25% with damage control.  Now, the fleet wide repair skill is 50% at 60 DP, and 12.5% at 240 DP (a full 400 battle size deployment, which a low tech style needs to do against end game fleets), and Damage Control requires it to be elite to get that benefit.  High and mid-tech care less, because they simply tend to need less repairs.  Even fully destroyed, low tech seems to require more supplies and time to go from 0 to fully healed than their high tech equivalents.

Speaking of Damage Control, it is the only elite skill which doesn't directly help you in combat, only after combat.  Which means if you make it elite on an officer, you're sacrificing immediate combat strength for out of combat quality of life (i.e. not waiting 23 days for your Onslaught XIV to fully repair).  Making the ship weaker means it is more likely to take more damage in combat - directly working against the intended effect.  In my other runs, I can not recall stopping a trip out to several bounties unless I got my flagship or other signficant ship killed.  However, with low tech, I'll sometimes find my flagship or other capital with 20-25 day repair times in routine play, forcing me to return early or alternatively, get up from the game and walk around while I wait for the two minutes for the 25 days to pass and then proceed to engage the bounty.

Since repairs are a campaign layer issue, intended to be fixed by the campaign layer tree (i.e. Industry), it means if you are focusing on a low tech style (which has many poor campaign layer stats - higher fuel usage, higher crew requirements, more repairs needed), you are more incentivized to give up direct combat power to fix those campaign layer issues when compared to a shield focus and efficient doctrine like high tech.  Which in turn makes them weaker in direct combat.  The alternative solution is to simply bring more ships so you can swap to undamaged ones, but that directly reduces the power of DP scaling fleet skills.

Which is an interesting side effect of scaling skills based off total fleet DP, is that the worse off your ships are per DP, the more ships you need to bring, as they are more likely to need to retreat or be destroyed, and thus need more reinforcements.  Making scaling skills weaker, and thus making your ships even worth less effective DP because the bonuses are smaller.  It's a rather viscious circle for over costed (in DP) ships.  Similarly, under costed by DP ships means you need fewer ships, allowing you to benefit more from skills, making them stronger. 

This is not necessarily a problem in a single player game, and normal players have access to the full suite of ships in the game, but I feel it should be something that is taken into consideration and at the least acknowledged.

For example, my duo Radiant + pile of 11 high tech frigates was so low maintenance, it had two shepherds and a dram for logistics, and was beating 3 Radiant Ordos without much issue.  My two Onslaught, Legion, two Mora, four Enforcer, two Condor, four Lasher fleet required a Prometheus, two Phaetons, four shepherds and a Colossus as a logistics train, and was having more difficulty, despite also having 3 "capstone" skills.  Officer Training, Special Modifications, and Missile Specialization versus Officer Management, Automated Ships, and Derelict Contingent - although maybe that was Derelict Contingent's fault.  Still, I probably could have replaced a Radiant with a Paragon or Odyssey and had similar success without derelict contingent - I was just under 180 DP with that Radiant fleet anyways, as opposed to 232 DP with the low tech fleet.

7) Lastly, the low tech style had been dependent on fighters as well, to help catch faster ships or finish off fleeing ones.  It has destroyer tier, cruiser tier, and capital tier carriers, all of which are signficantly weaker now (and with good reason, fighter spam in 0.9.1a was rather strong) due to the loss of damage reduction fighter skills.  Although, low tech doctrine carriers might be more affected, as they have no fighter boosting skills, and thus is the most heavily affected by fighter bay based skill limitations.  Low tech simply brought more fighters, rather than making them deal more damage (Herons), put more on the field (Drovers), or made them more efficient in travel (Astral).

So the skill changes to officers have reduced the specialization low tech officers could do, either in protection or fighters.  In 0.9.1a, because low tech relies on more heavily on more mechanics than other doctrines, low tech officers could boost their defensive aspects more, generally at the cost of offense, but see greater returns.  Now, with the new choose 1 out of 2 style officer mechanics, that reliance on multiple mechanics comes at a cost that other officers don't have in the same way.  An Onslaught's defense is it's damage at range preventing diving ships, it's flak and vulcans (i.e. point defense), it's shield, and lastly it's armor - roughly in order of encounter.  A typical high tech doctrine ship's defense is it's speed and it's shield, in that order.

My thoughts on the individual ships:

Luddic Path Lashers with built in SO are decent for 4 DP (after restoration).  They're also dirt cheap to restore after receiving d-mods, something like 13-15,000 credits.  Their biggest problem is, while they are efficient for a 4 DP ship, they are still a 4 DP ship.  Unlike 8 DP Tempests or 15 DP Hyperions, you can't really build a fleet around them.  You also really can't afford to put many officers in them, making wolf pack tactics a poor match.  10 officers would only be 40 DP worth of frigates, leaving 120 to 200 DP without officers.  The other point is, if free SO Lashers are okay at 4 DP, what does that say about the standard Lasher?  Although the standard lasher does have decent PPT without an officer, and is still useful for grabbing capture points and dueling with other frigates to prevent flanking.  Overall, it's a frigate, and does frigate things for a cost that feels appropriate.  Late game it's also dirt cheap to restore, which means slapping on reinforced bulwark and not caring about them blowing up is quite reasonable.

The Enforcer feels like it's in a fairly good spot these days, with it's straight up 20% toughness boost, and the addition of s-mods to it's already large pool of 110 OP.  Expanded missile racks + missile specialization means it can be fielding 36 sabots or harpoons, which feels pretty good in the initial exchanges at least.  With an officer, it survives surprisingly long for a 9 DP destroyer, but damage output falls off severely once the missiles run out.  Until then though, it's a scary little bowling ball that has a place even in end game fleets.

Condors are cheap fighter deployment, and maybe a missile thrower depending on fighter choice.  In 0.9.1a, massing them and drowning your opponent in fighters was a reasonable strategy.  That's much less of an option in 0.9.5a, but  bombers still can help overwhelm a ship.  Early and mid-game, a few fighters can help hunt down frigates faster than the Enforcers in a destroyer pack.  Officers that fly these early game can then promote to Moras or Legions later, but late game these will tend to be officerless, if used at all. Overall, they're not as good as they once were, but still can be used toss some Longbows or Daggers an enemy's way.

The Dominator didn't receive any buffs like the Onslaught and Enforcer, and just feels like it is in a worse place in 0.9.5a than in 0.9.1a for all the above reasoning.  It still can be setup with a bunch of missiles, and it's long range large mounts make it effective at shooting in a firing line against enemy capital ships, but it just feels overall less efficient compared to the other cruiser options.  It's designed to punch up, not down, and with the improvements to frigates and other bonuses scaling with DP, that can be a problem.  For player piloting, it pales in comparison to an Aurora or Doom.  The new Champion feels like a better AI line holder these days (more speed, more flux, a little less missile burst, but HEF + Tachyon or Plasma is strong gun burst).  Eagles feel like they survive better on a line, with the ability to back off, better shields, and the ability to swing around to face a frigate quickly.

S-mods probably help a Mora be able to fully embrace missiles and fighters at the same time.  Expanded missiles + ECCM combined with a bomber selection is quite doable now.  Longbows backed up by harpoons for example, or sabots backed by Daggers.  Damper field + Heavy Armor + armor tanking skills do not feel quite brick like they once did with officers.  It still takes a beating, but not quite as much, and it's fighters are more likely to die, leaving it with less offense while using Damping field. Still, it's usable support, lasts a lot longer than a Condor if flanked, and can stand on the front line for a little bit.

Legion also did not receive any specific buffs, so weakened fighters tend to make it perform worse.  On the other hand, it benefits from s-mods and missile specialization the same as a Mora.  Given a Legion can mount 5 medium missle pods, that's a potential 180 sabots boosted by ECCM and 50% faster firing speed, combined with 4 bomber wings, and two ballistic mounts. Still other ships also benefit from s-mods and missile buffs (like the Odyssey and Aurora), so relatively speaking, it's a little bit worse for wear.

Onslaught did receive some buffs.  I think it feels better offensively, but is noticably weaker defensively.  In 0.9.1a a fully skilled Onslaught could survive some surprising situations. However in 0.9.5a I can't be as reckless piloting it, and I tend to have significantly more damage than I would have in 0.9.1a at the end of similar fights.  TPCs feel much better to fire though, and the extra OP from s-mods can be used on a whole host of useful hull mods (Expanded missile racks and ECCM come to mind).  Player piloting feels a lot like drive flux up, vent, drive flux up, vent, making resistant flux conduits mandatory for me, and makes me miss the old +25% vent speed skill.  For me, since I used to use them as line holders backed up by support ships, the reduced durability factors more into my weighting, and I think they're a touch worse than they were overall.

I find the doctrine seem to hold up fine against late game intel bounties of all stripes, Tri-tach, Persean, Hegemony, etc.  It is when you start pushing the more end game fleets like full sized Ordos or s-mod officered Dooms that fleet becomes stressed close to the breaking point, often ending with 30-60 DP worth of ships destroyed on my side.  I could win, but needed a colony or commission income backing it.  My Tri-tach theme run and my normal use whatever run didn't have nearly as much trouble with such full Ordos or high end contact bounties.  Also, I will note fat fingering F on an Onslaught at the wrong time in an iron man save can be... painful.  Most ships don't punish you so much when you hit the wrong button. :)

Now ships don't necessarily need to be perfectly balanced.  Pirate ships are intended as a stepping stone for player fleets to crush, for example.  And there's not a true symmetry between primarily shield tankers (like an Apogee or Aurora), and shield plus armor tankers like the Onslaught.  Also, old armor tanking could make ships take a long, long time to die if you didn't have the right tools.  However, the in campaign differential between some low tech doctrine ships and other doctrines (taking full advantage of officer and player skill selection as players normally do) may be a bit larger than intended at the moment, with the possible exception when using Derelict Contingent.
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Megas

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Re: Low tech doctrine play through comments
« Reply #1 on: April 25, 2021, 01:50:46 PM »

Quote
I will note the Gremlin is technically low tech combat ship, but is also a phase ship, and so doesn't fit the standard low tech "style".  In addition an Afflictor, at 8 DP, is just straight up better version of the Gremlin at 6 DP.  My guess is it was mainly intended as a "pirate" phase ship - overall weaker than standard combat ships of the same class.
More like entry-level phase ship as part of the starter/no industry package (along with Mules and Ventures) because player has a doctrine, and phase 1 is no good without phase ships.  I suspect Gremlin was made to fill that niche.
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Arcagnello

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Re: Low tech doctrine play through comments
« Reply #2 on: April 25, 2021, 01:53:17 PM »

Amazing feedback! For someone that just started his own low tech themed campaign this mountain of information is a treasure trove!

1)It's as I feared. The lack of a true high FP low tech frigade really hurts Vanilla when trying to stick to low tech. can't wait to see what the new Low Tech superfrigade Alex is working on looks like.

2)I noticed you mentioned the absolutely GLORIOUS penta Sabot SRM Pod Legion but not the XIV variant that can also fully dedicate to both missiles and fighters with the introduction of Smods. Did you muster the strength I did not have to not pick them up as you found them?

3)Dominator is in a wierd spot yeah. The XIV variant I have in my fleet is finally able to have (almost) max vents, two Mk9 autocannons and three functional medium missile slots with both missile racks and ECCM, but the thing as a whole still feels left behind. A dominator is barely able to continuously fire just two Mk9 autocannons with full vents, flux distributor and Stabilized shields.

If anything, giving a cruiser that's even slower and more sluggish than some capital ships at least enough flux to fire all his weapons without selling its soul to Moloch should be the first thing to consider if a buff of it is being discussed. It works rather well with two Hellbores and two Hypervelocity Drivers but not putting kinetics into those hardpoints really smells like heresy.

4)I noticed there is no mention of the Doritos. Good. Your mental sanity is better off forgetting those things even exist in a vanilla low tech Iron Mode run. At least I have an asteroid with Fortress Shield scavenged from a Paragon to hopefully help me  ::)
« Last Edit: April 25, 2021, 01:55:28 PM by Arcagnello »
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Low tech doctrine play through comments
« Reply #3 on: April 25, 2021, 02:03:16 PM »

2)I noticed you mentioned the absolutely GLORIOUS penta Sabot SRM Pod Legion but not the XIV variant that can also fully dedicate to both missiles and fighters with the introduction of Smods. Did you muster the strength I did not have to not pick them up as you found them?

Simply lucked out and didn't find any in the run.  I ignored the story line, and was mostly a bounty hunt test, so didn't actually do all that much exploration.  Only picked up about 4 colony goodies, but did get a bunch of alpha cores testing compositions against Radiants. 

I had been using a Legion XIV in a different run with dual Hurricane MIRVs, 2 broadsword, 2 Longbows, Expanded Missile Racks, ECCM, Heavy armor, ITU, hypervelocity drivers and some PD.  I was using it to back Paragons as a support ship and seemed to work as well as you'd expect in the role.  Did something similar with an Astral (6 longbows, plus Hurricanes/Expanded Missile Racks/ECCM).  S-mods definitely help the missile + fighter combo, but that's true of a lot of ships.  Everybody is getting a fairly significant boost with them.

4)I noticed there is no mention of the Doritos. Good. Your mental sanity is better off forgetting those things even exist in a vanilla low tech run. At least I have an asteroid with Fortress Shield scavenged from a Paragon to hopefully help me  ::)

Again, didn't do all the much exploration - which is less efficient with said ships due to their poor campaign stats, but still doable.  I suppose I could do a quick check of the campaign file to see where they are and give them a run, although I'm not hopeful.  The fleet is already starting to be creaky against just Radiants.  On the other hand, a pile of SO enforcers might not be bad against Doritos.  Just spam them with sabots and harpoons.  Who cares if a bunch bite the dust, they're only 9 DP each, you can deploy like 20 plus a capital ship and cruiser.
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pairedeciseaux

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Re: Low tech doctrine play through comments
« Reply #4 on: April 25, 2021, 02:40:18 PM »

Nice write-up. :)

Kite is also classified as low-tech. I have not yet tried regular Lasher nor the LP version. Maybe you just need more of them to build an effective wolf pack?

In my experience, the biggest 0.95 change to Mora came from AI behaviours. My Moras have consistently stayed at the front line, even with timid officers, and always did a great job.

My biggest issue with the largest low-tech ships is the high logistic profile. As you hinted you just don't want to explore abroad with them. I can't live without Efficiency Overhaul on pristine capitals, now imagine when they have those nasty logistic D-hullmods.

Fortunately, I play with mixed "tech-levels". So I don't have to support a full fleet of them. I suppose, one way to put it would be: in order to support an end-game pure low-tech fleet, one really really needs high income colonies.
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Retry

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Re: Low tech doctrine play through comments
« Reply #5 on: April 25, 2021, 02:59:00 PM »

1)It's as I feared. The lack of a true high FP low tech frigade really hurts Vanilla when trying to stick to low tech. can't wait to see what the new Low Tech superfrigade Alex is working on looks like.
Frigate gameplay is dominated by high speed and agility, with shields being the dominant method of protection due to its renewability and the ability of small, speedy warships to disengage to "replenish" their health.  The low-tech style is defined by armor protection and ballistic, often long-range firepower... which doesn't synergize very well with the Frigate class size.  It's impressive the Lasher is as solid of a ship as it is.

As for superfrigates, is a low-tech superfrigate a thing Alex is actually working on?
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NaniByte

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Re: Low tech doctrine play through comments
« Reply #6 on: April 25, 2021, 03:30:21 PM »

Interesting write up. I would be interested in the same type of write up for high tech ships. I went trough some of your post history but didn't find anything like that.
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Arcagnello

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Re: Low tech doctrine play through comments
« Reply #7 on: April 25, 2021, 03:50:23 PM »

1)It's as I feared. The lack of a true high FP low tech frigade really hurts Vanilla when trying to stick to low tech. can't wait to see what the new Low Tech superfrigade Alex is working on looks like.
Frigate gameplay is dominated by high speed and agility, with shields being the dominant method of protection due to its renewability and the ability of small, speedy warships to disengage to "replenish" their health.  The low-tech style is defined by armor protection and ballistic, often long-range firepower... which doesn't synergize very well with the Frigate class size.  It's impressive the Lasher is as solid of a ship as it is.

As for superfrigates, is a low-tech superfrigate a thing Alex is actually working on?

I heard talk about him designing an 8FP low tech frigade of sorts. I mean...I guess it's a superfrigade for low Tech, given it's the only one in that deployment range  :-[

Man, how much armor do you think it would need to be competitive? Oh and it's got to have both manouvering thrusters very good flux dissipation&weapon mounts to even come CLOSE to being competitive with the other high tech and midline superfigades.

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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Low tech doctrine play through comments
« Reply #8 on: April 25, 2021, 03:56:32 PM »

I heard talk about him designing an 8FP low tech frigade of sorts. I mean...I guess it's a superfrigade for low Tech, given it's the only one in that deployment range  :-[

Man, how much armor do you think it would need to be competitive? Oh and it's got to have both manouvering thrusters very good flux dissipation&weapon mounts to even come CLOSE to being competitive with the other high tech and midline superfigades.

To be honest, a low tech super frigate is an Enforcer at 9 DP. :)
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Arcagnello

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Re: Low tech doctrine play through comments
« Reply #9 on: April 25, 2021, 05:18:24 PM »

I heard talk about him designing an 8FP low tech frigade of sorts. I mean...I guess it's a superfrigade for low Tech, given it's the only one in that deployment range  :-[

Man, how much armor do you think it would need to be competitive? Oh and it's got to have both manouvering thrusters very good flux dissipation&weapon mounts to even come CLOSE to being competitive with the other high tech and midline superfigades.

To be honest, a low tech super frigate is an Enforcer at 9 DP. :)

But the enforcer is a destroyer, meaning I can't have it with the bonuses of wolfpack tactics, override the bowling ball and go Strike on the enemy!

What...what if turning a modified Enforcer with Manouvering Thrusters and transforming it into a Frigade was Alex's plan to make Low Tech competitive all along?
« Last Edit: April 25, 2021, 05:27:47 PM by Arcagnello »
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Thaago

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Re: Low tech doctrine play through comments
« Reply #10 on: April 25, 2021, 05:30:34 PM »

Great writeup! The fact that low tech relies on more layers of defense than other techs is an interesting one. Helmsmanship and Shields are both "free" for non-phase high tech with no skill conflicts, while point defense and armor are conflicted with damage increasing skills. I'll also note that high tech receives stacking bonuses to its PD through point defense and EWM, while ballistic PD does not, though gunnery implants is a good boost for ballistic PD as it tends to be high DPS, short range as opposed to charge based.

I agree with your comments on the Dominator: its designed to be punching up as part of a group of ships taking on a capital ship. It does that job fairly well, and I find them to be effective line holders against Radiants, but their weakness to smaller ships is just a big problem with how nasty small ships are this version. As long as the burn speed is ok and the player has the funds to cover purchase and logistics, an Onslaught is just better than 1.6 Dominators, mostly because of the extra range, extra turret coverage to let is smack frigates, and better officer density. Though the missile density and missile mount placement it worse, as it particularly apparent in comparing something like 2/3x sabot dominator vs 2-4x sabot onslaught. So while I do use Dominators and find their performance acceptable for the pretty narrow role of cruisers slugging it out with capitals, I don't use Dominators and Onslaughts at the same time.

For fighters, I've found Thunders in Condors to be excellent at shoring up a low tech fleet's weaknesses. 2 wings is sufficient for suppressing/flaming out fast frigates and phase ships, and eventually killing them, and leaves enough OP for a medium missile. But, while the Thunder Condors are good and can suddenly make a Lasher pop a tempest, it would make a Tempest pop a Tempest a whole lot better. The bombers I've taken to putting on Mora's as they have the OP with S mods to still have missiles, and bombers benefit greatly from wing concentration.
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SCC

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Re: Low tech doctrine play through comments
« Reply #11 on: April 25, 2021, 11:37:20 PM »

I agree that low-tech ships' cost is nowhere near their actual performance, ignoring repairs, and that Burn Drive should be possible to interrupt.
I was using Dominators in my fixed fleet, but I eventually phased them out, since they didn't seem to have anything worthwhile to offer to me. It doesn't help that I also didn't have enough spare DPs for escorts, I needed all my ships killing stuff, not wasting their potential by protecting friendlies.

I heard talk about him designing an 8FP low tech frigade of sorts. I mean...I guess it's a superfrigade for low Tech, given it's the only one in that deployment range  :-[

Man, how much armor do you think it would need to be competitive? Oh and it's got to have both manouvering thrusters very good flux dissipation&weapon mounts to even come CLOSE to being competitive with the other high tech and midline superfigades.

To be honest, a low tech super frigate is an Enforcer at 9 DP. :)
In 0.9.1, I would have agreed that low-tech doesn't need good frigates to be competitive, since those frigates and low-tech doesn't work all that well (unless you copy Centurion and slap Damper Field on them) and proposed instead that it should get a "light" frigate-burn destroyer. Now, with how many buffs frigates are getting, this isn't so viable anymore. It's a shame, really.
As for armour, I imagine it would need 750 or so to be competitive with high-tech frigates for toughness.

pponmypupu

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Re: Low tech doctrine play through comments
« Reply #12 on: April 27, 2021, 10:34:48 PM »

Really informative write up, saves me the trouble of doing a low tech playthrough myself.
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Sarissofoi

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Re: Low tech doctrine play through comments
« Reply #13 on: April 28, 2021, 01:49:58 AM »

Yeah I agree.
Low tech get really nerfed in this patch and its not like it was in strong position before it.
Mostly indirectly but still.
They should be cheap, reliable and durable but they are not. They should be full of dakka but if you put enough dakka on them they just choke on flux.
I really miss my hordes of LP Cerberuses tearing apart enemies(and dying in process).

Satirical

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Re: Low tech doctrine play through comments
« Reply #14 on: April 30, 2021, 01:44:32 AM »

fighting doritos be like
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