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It's a sad joke for masochists that like playing Lepers in Darkest Dungeon to make the game harder for themselves. Buff it hard or keep it as the joke it is for comedic value!

12 (19%)

A disappointing mess of ships the AI can't use that should be rebalanced to actually hold up in Endgame

18 (28.6%)

It's a slightly underperforming ship philosophy that is fine where it is because "flavour" and "who plays Low tech only anyway!".

8 (12.7%)

A decently performing array of situational ships that are fine where they are if properly combined.

21 (33.3%)

An annoying array of brick ships that take forever to kill and sometimes deal damage. They either don't work or are way too strong!

4 (6.3%)

Total Members Voted: 63

Voting closed: July 21, 2021, 03:08:08 AM

[Lucky33]

To sum things up.

There is only one nice ship left in the whole low tech setup. And this is Atlas MkII.

Not sure if yar.

[Thaago]

@Arcagnello

Below is my current Legion. I'm not saying that this is the best Legion or even particularly optimized, but its been working very well. The officer is aggressive and has Strike Commander (mostly wasted, this could be improved), Point Defense (not bad, makes the vulcans a bit better a missile defense and boosts the fighters, but its probably not as good as target analysis for a gun/missile/carrier hybrid), Impact Mitigation Elite (great skill, residual armor is at 150 for this ship), Missile Spec Elite (incredible power skill), Gunnery Implants (incredible skill for gunships), Damage Control (stacks with IM for toughness, but honestly the CR booster would be better considering this has fighters). So a decent, but not optimal commander and maybe I should train a new one up. Missiles are in 2 linked groups, so it fires 6 sabots or 2 reapers at a time.

Spoiler

[close]

The main target for improvement would probably be upgrading the Talons to something better. They were thrown on as budget picks and the wings overall hunt down frigates just fine (because 4 wings = dead frigates) so I haven't bothered to optimize them.

[Edit]
AAhhhh I JUST realized this has ECM package instead of ECCM package! This thing has been equipped wrong the whole time!!!

Welp, its actually even a little bit better than I thought. 5 extra OP and missiles that are faster!

[Arcagnello]

Give all low tech ships an extra 25 zero flux boost and give them all new ship systems.

Low tech needs some kind of speed boost but their gimmick is that they are meant to struggle to pick fights but have more effective and efficient weapons. So they can’t have a skill system that just gives them mobility in the same way plasma burn or phase skimmer do.

Strangely enough, I think Low-Tech should have the best straight-line speed in the game. "Charging bull"-type of a methodology.
It would be a M.O. of being able to get into position quickly/safely but being slow and pondering once there.

If you have long range, you don't really benefit from getting into the thick quickly. If anything, you want to fire at the enemy while the enemy can't fire at you for as long as possible.

Strangely enough, I think Low-Tech should have the best straight-line speed in the game. "Charging bull"-type of a methodology.

It would be a M.O. of being able to get into position quickly/safely but being slow and pondering once there.

If you have long range, you don't really benefit from getting into the thick quickly. If anything, you want to fire at the enemy while the enemy can't fire at you for as long as possible.

I'm starting to realize the "Low tech Dilemma" of either rebalancing them with more mobility or with better firepower is awfully similar to the good old "What came before, the Chicken or the Egg?" saying.

It's rather complicated to ascertain which one would work better if implemented, but I'm pretty sure either method would, in fact, make Low Tech viable in endgame beyond just a few outlier ships.

To sum things up.

There is only one nice ship left in the whole low tech setup. And this is Atlas MkII.

Not sure if yar.

You know I entirely forgot about the good old Atlas Mk.II. It's a supremely good Low Tech(ish?) ship. You're basically getting a Conquest at half the deployment cost with Accellerated Ammo Feed instead of a mobility focus.

I reckon two Paragons accompanied by 3 Atlas Mk.IIs deals with the Doritos just fine, actually. I'm thinking something along the lines of Double Hurricane Mirvs with Elite Missile Spec+EMR+ECCM and then a choice between Double Gauss, Double Mjolnir, Double Mk.9 Autocannon and Double Storm Needler. Everything should fit with 3 Integrated Hullmods and the other weapon mounts either being downgraded to Point Defence, left empty or a mixture of both!

@Arcagnello

Below is my current Legion. I'm not saying that this is the best Legion or even particularly optimized, but its been working very well. The officer is aggressive and has Strike Commander (mostly wasted, this could be improved), Point Defense (not bad, makes the vulcans a bit better a missile defense and boosts the fighters, but its probably not as good as target analysis for a gun/missile/carrier hybrid), Impact Mitigation Elite (great skill, residual armor is at 150 for this ship), Missile Spec Elite (incredible power skill), Gunnery Implants (incredible skill for gunships), Damage Control (stacks with IM for toughness, but honestly the CR booster would be better considering this has fighters). So a decent, but not optimal commander and maybe I should train a new one up. Missiles are in 2 linked groups, so it fires 6 sabots or 2 reapers at a time.

Spoiler

[close]

The main target for improvement would probably be upgrading the Talons to something better. They were thrown on as budget picks and the wings overall hunt down frigates just fine (because 4 wings = dead frigates) so I haven't bothered to optimize them.

[Edit]
AAhhhh I JUST realized this has ECM package instead of ECCM package! This thing has been equipped wrong the whole time!!!

Welp, its actually even a little bit better than I thought. 5 extra OP and missiles that are faster!

Oh, don't worry, I've done worse. I've spent story points integrating Point Defence AI instead of Integrated Targeting unit on an Endgame Conquest before, which forced my hand into buying a brand new one and farm 3 more story points to do it properly. I've been double checking what to integrate into ships since that time 

I really like the build by the way!
I remember experimenting with something similar to it a year or so ago, but it also showcases why the current Legion is worth 35FP, not 40.

1) You got 250 ordinance points
to properly equip a capital ship that even has 4 fighter bays. Your setup is arguably very well tought-out but even you had to cut down on many, arguably vital things to make it all fit. The only other capital ship that more or less has the same issue the legion gets is the Astral, which (if my memory works properly for once) is 50 Deployment Points and only gets 270 ordinance Points, but the Astral is a lot more carrier than battle, really, with a ship system atcually improving it and all that, instead of a good way for the AI to kill itself with.

2) Let us do some math.
The most notable features of the milktoast Legion are its 4 fighter bays, two large ballistic turrets and 5 composite turrets. This more or less forces us into giving it the bare minimum setup to properly use all its features:
1)Expanded Deck Crew + 4 Broadswords (which I consider to be the bare minimum, cheaper fighters essentially underuse the fighter bays)= 52 ordinance Points
2)5 medium missile weapons with expanded missile racks 90 Ordinance Points, alternatively, the ship also works with 5 Pilums and ECCM= 55 Ordinance Points
3)2 large Ballistic turrets with Integrated Targeting unit. Even the Cheapest options result in a minimum of 57 Ordinance Points

Without integrating anything, a Legion with all these features has alredy sunk 199 Ordinance Points out of 250 to properly equip everything, and this is before we even consider installing point defence or vents. You can go down to "just" 164 ordinance points if you use 2 Mk.9 autocannons, 5 Pilums with ECCM and 4 Broadswords.

3) Even Officer skills go against the Legion
As if the situation could not get any worse, the fact the Legion is a slow, low tech battlecarrier that also uses large ballistic weapons AND missiles puts it in a very, very complicated position when picking Officer skills.

The current Holy Officer Skill Trinity for capital ships (and most ships with an officer, for that matter) are
1) Helsmanship since it makes the ship faster, eliminates the need of Aux Thursters since it litterally applies the same effect
2) Target Analysis to deal a lot more extra damage, it should also be made Elite since it litterally doubles all damage to engines/weapons, including EMP damage. You can guess how disgusting weapons like Ion Beams, tacyon Lances and Mjolnir Cannons get with it, just to name three.
3) Reliability Engineering, because 100% CR in combination with Crew Training is amazing on any ship.

Having already invested 3 skills out of 6 (or 5, if you want to hurt yourself) skills into borderline autopicks, the milktoast Legion begins to have an existential crysis when deciding what to pick next as Armor Tanking, Ballistic weapons, Fighter LPCs and Missiles all want a skill or two each.

I would strongly advise against building Legions for armor tanking. The ship simply is not equipped well enough for the job unless you make tremendous sacrifices in the offensive department. Any Armor tanking ship requires Heavy Armor, Reinforced Bulkheads, Armored Weapon Mounts, Solar Shielding, Reinforced Flux Conduits and Automated Repair Unit for it to reasonably work even without an officer. An Officer further improves this but he/she needs to not only have Reliability Engineering, but also Elite Impact Mitigation and Damage Control.

A Legion can't even fit half of that. Hell, the only five vanilla ships that are even eligible for armor tanking are the XIV Enforcer, the Mora, the XIV Dominator, the XIV Onslaught and the Radiant. Every other ship basically nerfs itself by pursuing armor tanking in 0.95.


A missile focus Legion is what I recommend most for the ship, no matter the setup. It may arguably be the most expensive option to install, but it only requires one Elite officer skill to properly augment, which is Missile Specialization. The problem with missiles on a Legion (unless you go penta Pilum with ECCM, but that's mostly a decently performing meme, not an endgame setup) is that the ship is going to run out of them in drawn out battles, and, unlike ships long the lines of the Enforcer, the Fury or even the Conquest/Odissey, it does not have enough mobility to actually retreat from drawn out battles, essentially leaving you with a 40 Deployment Points Clog that's essentially a mutated Dominator with fighter bays that most likely are already spent at this point of the battle.


A Ballistic focus Legion can appear to be a cheaper, more effective option than missiles, but it actually is a lot more expensive to keep running and it even exposes the ship itself to its own, inherent design weaknesses.

For Starters, unlike capitals like the Odissey/Conquest that already come with very good flux stats which do not require that many vents to be installed if the main ship focus is elsewhere, the Legion has terrible flux stats which makes 50-60 vents mandatory on an already strained OP pool.

Secondly, the Legion has a mediocre shield backed up by mediocre weapon positioning, which cuts into the effective weapon range of the ship, more or less forcing it into also investing into either Hardened Shields/ITU, because the ship itself can't really do armor tanking and a ballistic focus at the same time anyway.

Thirdly, this absolutely horrible situation of infinite suffering is again made even worse by an officer. The best Ballistic focused Legion I attempted using in 0.95 had Two hellbores, 3-4 Hypervelocity Drivers as offfensive weapons, Integrated Hardened Shields/ITU as relevant hullmods and an Officer with both Gunnery Implants AND Elite Long Range Spec, not exactly for the damage huff but for the amazing 30% projectile speed, allowing weapons like the Hellbores or even Arbalests and Heavy Mortars to be quite effective at hitting things accurately, along with the reduced recoil of Gunnery Implants.

That is two skills in addition to the holy Trinity plus most likely Shield Modulation, which effectively locks you out of both a fighter or a missile focus.

I've just realized I've just written another Thrice Moloch-cursed essay so I'll stop explaining why I think the Legion is not worth more than 35DP for now. It may have a lot of potential hardware but it barely has enough software to run it properly all at once, which leads to extensive downgrading of its capabilities.

I don't see it staying at 40DP while being competitive unless it gets 50 more Ordinance Points, as a baseline. One Onslaught and two Moras is an infinetly better alternative to two anemic fat pigeons that hold too many weapons and ship capabilities to properly use more than one of them at the same time.



Addendum:
I'm also suprised by the poll results by the way,  we have an almost perfect split between "it's bad it needs buffs" and "it's balanced". I more or less never even considered including an option suggesting nerfs to low tech (in a serious manner, at least). Thanks to everyone who voted and gave this otherwise nonsensical rambling of mine some grounding!

[Thaago]

Thats a nice essay, but I think most of it is incorrect. The fit I showed above has enough OP (which is 260, not 250) and does very well in combat.  I've got all the essential offensive hullmods and even Heavy Armor, which is a luxury/toughness pick. The missile armaments are completely maxed out (now that I didn't put the wrong hullmod on). I'm using 1 regular large gun and 1 high cost gun (in both flux and OP). The ship has plenty of dissipation: I could take off 10 vents and it would still work well, and if I downgraded the Mjolnir to a Hellbore I could go down to 15 vents and still have enough flux, saving a total of 43 more OP. For fighters, using interceptors on this ship isn't a mistake, its what maximizes the effectiveness of the ship in the fleet (I need to kill frigates. Go kill frigates, interceptors!). Upgrading the Talons would be a good call which takes a few OP, but not a huge amount.

So I'm not really sure what you mean by saying I had to cut down on vital things to make the fit work? Every weapon is filled other than 2 small ballistic spots with poor arcs, including an elite weapon that takes extra OP and flux. All essential hullmods are in + 1 luxury. It has plenty of flux. Missiles are completely maxed out. Off the top of my head I think I could shave 50 OP off of this build and still have a functional ship. Just weaker, cause 50 OP.

For skills: the only skill the Legion needs is gunnery implants for recoil reduction and range, and the only trap skill is Helmsmanship. Don't take Helmsmanship on a capital ship, ever. Missile Spec is incredibly strong and the Legion has excellent missiles. That "requirement" is not a bad thing, it means the ship wrecks face with missiles. I'd say eliting target analysis is a mid tier choice for the Legion: Missile Spec and Impact Mitigation are both much, much better elite skills.  Everything else: the Legion is flexible enough that nearly any other skill is still a good choice. Its not a bad thing that so many skills work on the Legion: its a good thing. Pick some skills, then make sure the build doesn't waste them.

[Igncom1]

Burn drive, I find, is a completely different play style for a ship then normal.

I've had most success with larger ships like the onslaught where I tell them to execute a target from the second I see the enemy. Even if the enemy can teleport they will still be perused across the whole map. Which seems counter intuitive for low tech to be hyper aggressive like that.

But yeah if you can match the enemy fleet, ship for ship, you can... often just tag the whole enemy fleet for a burn drive 1v1 where their massed missile and forward facing ballistics can often push the enemy past the bring in one big heroic charge.

But this is anecdotal and relies of ideal conditions as frankly it's not entirely like other ship types can't do the same.

I suppose what I wanna say is that decent shields give you time, bad shields even with good armour don't. A change in perspective and tactics was what changed low tech for me to being a fun idea into something that can hound radiant battleships across the map rather then the reverse.

It can be done, but man if it ain't a lot more expensive risky work then braindead paragon spamming.

[WeiTuLo]

Speaking of Broadswords, I think I figured out why they can underperform sometimes. Looking at their flux stats, they have 80 flux capacity and 10 flux dissipation. LMGs are 19 flux/sec and there are 2 of them. It takes about 2.86 seconds for a Broadsword to flux itself out at max fire rate. After that, its dissipation can support 82.1 ballistic DPS/second.

[Undead]

Don't take Helmsmanship on a capital ship, ever. 

I disagree, onslaught needs it to turn faster, as well as auxiliary thrusters

[Warnoise]

Low-tech will never be as useful as Mid-tech or High-tech ships and here's why:

High-tech: They have high shields, speed and very useful ship system. They also have special purpose ships such as Phase ships

Mid-tech: They have speed, weapon versatility and also very useful ship systems. They have special purpose ships such as Gryphon (missile cruiser) and monitor (tanker)

Low-tech: They have missiles and armor and crap ship systems (the only useful one is dumper field and it is given to a carrier lol)
Low-tech don't have special purpose ships so you simply can't make a competent late game fleet with them. Also, armor and missiles are the 2 things the AI is the worst at using. When you see your fleet dumping half of their loadouts on a kite, you know that missiles aren't the strong point of the AI. As about armor, that is one of the most useless stats in the game. In a fleet Vs fleet battle, shield is by far more important than armor. Also, armor value is only significant when it reaches above 1k, below that the ship will still get melted by late game threats. On top of that, in order to make a low-tech ship competitive, the player gotta fill it with hullmods to the brim, whereas high and mid tech ships don't need that many hullmods to be competitive

I hope Alex creates a low-tech ship that carries a special purpose (like gryphon, monitor, etc...). Something that has a ship system that slows down enemies would complement well the low-tech style.

[Lucky33]

Low Tech became the worst because the whole flux balance was broken. Now you can have flux sustainable double HB destroyers and triple HB cruisers. With triple the effective shield capacity compared to Low Tech counterparts. You need HeavyMG plus AssaultCG to emulate HeavyBlaster. That's 20 OP against 12. Previously it was compensated by the fact that HB needed much more vents to stay flux neutral. And Safety Overrides costed so much that it affected the whole build. Now you can install the needed mods as permanents for free. Take SO and be flux neutral. No more consuming your own flux pool by your fire. But you can't install weapons for free hence the double pay for the Low Tech. While you have inherently worse flux stats.

Missiles? High Tech can simply take multiple sabots on shields. No problem. Burst wise, small missile mounts are much better. DP wise, the only good thing Low Tech still has is the twin Large Missiles for 24 DP on the Atlas. Medium missiles are better kept on the Falcon (P), smalls on the frigates.

[Sutopia]

Low Tech became the worst because the whole flux balance was broken. Now you can have flux sustainable double HB destroyers and triple HB cruisers. With triple the effective shield capacity compared to Low Tech counterparts. You need HeavyMG plus AssaultCG to emulate HeavyBlaster. That's 20 OP against 12. Previously it was compensated by the fact that HB needed much more vents to stay flux neutral. And Safety Overrides costed so much that it affected the whole build. Now you can install the needed mods as permanents for free. Take SO and be flux neutral. No more consuming your own flux pool by your fire. But you can't install weapons for free hence the double pay for the Low Tech. While you have inherently worse flux stats.

Missiles? High Tech can simply take multiple sabots on shields. No problem. Burst wise, small missile mounts are much better. DP wise, the only good thing Low Tech still has is the twin Large Missiles for 24 DP on the Atlas. Medium missiles are better kept on the Falcon (P), smalls on the frigates.

You do know SO is not able to be built in right?

[Lucky33]

Yes, I do know that.

[Locklave]

I don't agree with this. A damage boost to all weapons is a damage boost to all weapons, it doesn't matter if the firing ship is mobile or not.

If the ship is struggling to keep the enemy in front of it then it isn't really firing, thus getting less benefit. Onslaught, Dominator, Enforcer, Legion. They sure love burn driving into a "I have no firing arch" situations.

[ElPresidente]

Strangely enough, I think Low-Tech should have the best straight-line speed in the game. "Charging bull"-type of a methodology.

It would be a M.O. of being able to get into position quickly/safely but being slow and pondering once there.

If you have long range, you don't really benefit from getting into the thick quickly. If anything, you want to fire at the enemy while the enemy can't fire at you for as long as possible.

Friend, what do you think speed is for? Not only for getting you into range, but also KEEPING you in the range (or at max range).

Long range + mobility is a MUCH better combo than long range + armor/defense. You simply keep backing away, staying at max range, making the enemy annoyed beyond all measure.

[Arcagnello]

@Thaago

Thats a nice essay, but I think most of it is incorrect.

You had me at the first half, not gonna lie 

The fit I showed above has enough OP (which is 260, not 250) and does very well in combat.

Ah, there we go, I remembered my XIV Legion having 270 OP and I assumed the milktoast version had 250. My bad there! 

I've got all the essential offensive hullmods and even Heavy Armor, which is a luxury/toughness pick. The missile armaments are completely maxed out (now that I didn't put the wrong hullmod on). I'm using 1 regular large gun and 1 high cost gun (in both flux and OP). The ship has plenty of dissipation: I could take off 10 vents and it would still work well, and if I downgraded the Mjolnir to a Hellbore I could go down to 15 vents and still have enough flux, saving a total of 43 more OP. For fighters, using interceptors on this ship isn't a mistake, its what maximizes the effectiveness of the ship in the fleet (I need to kill frigates. Go kill frigates, interceptors!). Upgrading the Talons would be a good call which takes a few OP, but not a huge amount.

So I'm not really sure what you mean by saying I had to cut down on vital things to make the fit work? Every weapon is filled other than 2 small ballistic spots with poor arcs, including an elite weapon that takes extra OP and flux. All essential hullmods are in + 1 luxury. It has plenty of flux. Missiles are completely maxed out. Off the top of my head I think I could shave 50 OP off of this build and still have a functional ship. Just weaker, cause 50 OP.

What? Arcagnello is evolving!
*8-bit Pokemon Red/Blue/Green/Yellow Evolution theme plays in the background*
Arcagnello evolved into Tryhardgnello!

Alright, now I'm ready!This Legion build is what I commonly refer to as "the optimist setup":
It's going to perform well if everything goes as planned, but the chances of it either being ineffective or, even worse, starting to helplessly backpedal itself until it explodes will go from 0 to 100 real quick as soon as something goes wrong. In order:

You have no point defence to speak of
Even being as charitable as my constructive criticism allows it and assuming you pilot it yourself, therefore keeping your fighters close mostly as point defence, You basically have no point defence to speak of.
The Legion itself already has a massive Shield and Point Defence blindspot in the back, only giving it ultra-short range point defence (and even skipping two small mounts for vulcans, not that it's gonna help, but still) will make doubly sure any slightly decent amount of missile fire not only coming from the front but also from the sides will hit their mark, and don't get me started on Salamanders.
Have your fighters either busy or in the process of being replaced and I'm pretty sure the whole capital ship can be immobilized for 15 seconds with a single Salamander MRM pod. Now, a low tech capital usually has Reinforced Flux Conduits, Automated Repair Unit or both, but since the Legion is an anemic fat pigeon the whole concept of taking any of these hullmods is a work of fiction.

You're in the flux negatives by around 300 flux/second
It's usually good practice on High tech and Midline to go a bit over your entire flux dissipation value with your offensive weapons. They are, fast, nimble ships with a good shield afterall, allowing them to quickly invest all their flux stats into dealing damage and then safely retreat back to catch their breath and/or just vent.
Low Tech capitals on the other hand -unless they use some insane abomination of a setup like Shield Shunt- should never exceed their total flux dissipation with their offensive weapons, since they'be generally got very bad shields with a rather large profile and low mobility preventing them to keep the enemy pressure off.
Oh, sure, a Mk.9 Autocannon and a Mjolnir backe dup by 3 Sabot Pods and 2 Typhoon realer launchers sure is impressive, but this also will translate in the ship fluxing itself into a life-threatening situation when the fight gets hard, even without enemy intervention.
The fact you also picked Heavy Armor above something that would help this thing a lot more by itself like Hardened Shields also means that not only the ship will be on high flux during combat most of the time, but it will also be awfully susceptible to overloading under pressure. Example:
Imagine being in a difficult combat situation for, I don't know, 20 seconds. The ship is probably going to be at 2/3 of its flux capacity.
Now, how many sabots do you think it takes to overload a Legion with just above 5000 leftover flux capacity and a mediocre (as far as metagame goes) 0.95 shield flux/damage ratio? Not more than 3 I think.

You're severely underusing those 4 fighter bays
I've got a very empirical way to decide whether or not Expanded Deck crew is worth it on a combat carrier:
If Expanded Deck Crew takes up more OP than the fighter/bomber LPCs it supposedly supports, then it's not worth it.
This is a setup where I would not even bother with 20OP worth of hullmod if the fighter bays it supposedly buffs are only 16 OP worth of fighters. Even something as inefficient as "Flux Distributor" would be a better option if you were adamant on keeping those large ballistic weapons.

For skills: the only skill the Legion needs is gunnery implants for recoil reduction and range, and the only trap skill is Helmsmanship. Don't take Helmsmanship on a capital ship, ever. Missile Spec is incredibly strong and the Legion has excellent missiles. That "requirement" is not a bad thing, it means the ship wrecks face with missiles. I'd say eliting target analysis is a mid tier choice for the Legion: Missile Spec and Impact Mitigation are both much, much better elite skills.  Everything else: the Legion is flexible enough that nearly any other skill is still a good choice. Its not a bad thing that so many skills work on the Legion: its a good thing. Pick some skills, then make sure the build doesn't waste them.

Gunnery Implants is a very good skill that I'd indeed pick all the time on a Legion officer even if it did not use those two large ballistic mounts offensively. Improved recoil plus ITU does miracles for the effectiveness of Point Defence weapons like vulcans.

I'm not sure why you're against Helsmanship really. Are you really not gonna pick a skill basically giving you Auxiliary Thrusters for free, plus top speed?

Don't take Helmsmanship on a capital ship, ever. 

I disagree, onslaught needs it to turn faster, as well as auxiliary thrusters

I don't agree with this. A damage boost to all weapons is a damage boost to all weapons, it doesn't matter if the firing ship is mobile or not.

If the ship is struggling to keep the enemy in front of it then it isn't really firing, thus getting less benefit. Onslaught, Dominator, Enforcer, Legion. They sure love burn driving into a "I have no firing arch" situations.

I don't need to add anything more, really. I found Helsmanship and 100%CR to improve handling on my XIV Onslaught well enough that I even forsake installing Aux Thrusters on it (then again, it uses 3 Mk.9 Autocannons, it unironically does better when enemies are on its sides rather than the front if the TPC has spent its ammo). It's an officer skill most Capital Ship officers sleep on, but it's quite important.

Having most avaiable skills in the officer picks that significantly improve a ship's combat capability does certainly sound favourable, but only ever being able to only pick 5, maybe 6 out of them and only making one, maybe two of them Elite means you're gonna have to make choices.
Making choices translates into also sacrificing aspects of a ship.
Sacrificing aspects of a ship can be summed up as underusing ship features, especially considering the Legion can't put anything but ballistics on those two large mounts and nothing but fighter/bomber LPCs on those 4 fighter bays.

An Onslaught focusing on durability and mid to long range sundering firepower can get a level 6 Reckless Officer with
-Helsmanship                 
-Reliability Engineering
As quality of life skill, then equally distribute the remaining 4 skills into
-Elite Impact Mitigation
-Damage Control
to fully buff the ship's tanking capability and then
-Elite Target Analysis
-Gunnery Implants
To (almost, since we're missing on elite Long Range Spec. improving projectile speed) fully buff ballistic and energy weapons.
We can safely cut those 4 missile weapons since they're mostly going to be dead weight for what we want out of the shp anyway


A Paragon focusing on shield tanking and firepower using 4 Autopulse Lasers can get a level 6 Aggressive officer with
-Helsmanship
-Reliability Engineering
-Shield Modulation
-Target Analysis
-Elite Energy Weapon mastery
-Gunnery Implants
-Elite Long Range Specialization
I don't even bother with filling those 4 pathetic missile slots on this setup, but I guess Salamander can be useful and they actually really screw with the AI control of omni shields.

A Conquest focusing on ultra-long range kinetic firepower and Hurricane MIRVs can get a cautious cautious Officer with
-Target Analysis
-Reliability Engineering
-Gunnery Implants
-Elite Long range Specialization
-Elite Missile Specialization
-Shield Modulation

See the trend? First come generalist, quality of life picks, then most skills are focused on improving one, two (at most) aspects of the ship, hopefully cutting whatever does not get buffed by both hullmods and officer skills and gives too little of a contribution to be worth the Ordinance Points.

The milktoast Legion on the other hand is more or less at a 3-way split betwen being a carrier, a missile boat and an artillery platform, with a very low Ordinance Points to Deployment Points ratio. This translates into more or less sacrificing a good quarter of the ship's capabilities to make the rest of it perform in a competitive manner, which depreciates the effectiveness of the ship overall.

Now, back down to earth, I'd suggest doing the following to your legion, assuming you're not alright with the ship eventually getting immobilized, overloaded and receving a nonconsensual thruster colonoscopy from the enemy some day. I'm assuming you're playing vanilla (can't see any mod content) so I will simply suggest the following setups on a legion that more or less gets only one, actually useful integrated hullmod (it does not seem you have Special Modifications, are you playing a campaign where you purposefully are not picking any Technology skill?) since Heavy Armor is just a

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlEKhZj07qk

[close]

These builds all use limited ammo missiles since you integrated EMR.

Build #1
Strip the thing completely, give it two Mk.9 Autocannons, 5 Harpoon Pods and fill all the small weapons with vulcans.
Install ITU, ECCM, Solar Shielding and Armored Weapon Mounts. I'm not sure if you can also comfortably fit Automated Repair Unit, but you can skip it for now, especially if you got Damage Control.
Make sad carrier noises and give the ship 4 Mining Pods with no EDC
Rest of the OP goes into vents, hopefully some capacitors afer you got 50 vents.

This build won't flux itself out as easily as your current one, has much better kinetic fierpower and will much more easily project mid-long range missile firepower in the form of harpoons during the battle. Works best with a Steady officer.

Build #2
Strip the thing completely, give it two Mk.9 Autocannons, 3 Typoon reaper launchers, 2 Dual Flaks (in the side mounts) and fill all the smalls with light machineguns
Install ITU and Expanded Deck Crew, don't know if you're gonna have enough for ECCM
Give it 4 Broadswords and Expanded Deck Crew
Put the rest if the OP into vents, hopefully also capacitors

This is a much more surivable build that can somewhat hold its own in the frontlines. Both Mk.9 Autocannons and Broadswords will both keep the enemy away and open them up for Reaper Torpedo hits. Works best with an aggressive officer

Build #3, which praises Ludd the most
Strip the thing completely, give it two hellbores, 5 Sabot SRM pods and fill all the small mounts with dual light machineguns
Install ITU and ECCM A part of me also shouts Automated Repair unit but I don't think that's gonna fit
Give it 4 Khopesh Wings and Expanded Deck Crew.

Rest of the OP goes into a 2:1 split between capacitors and vents. The thing needs to get close to the enemy, therefore it requires more capacitors. Man, Hardened shields would be so bloody useful now.

This is a balls to the wall approach to shipbuilding, It works but it also more or less guarantees the Legion will go out in a blaze of thermonuclear glory during hard fights.
Works best with a Reckless officer. Reinforced Bulkheads also help but I don't think you've got another slot for integrating hullmods, so we're gonna make do with just Reliability Engineering & Damage Control. Lugging around a whole Starliner filled with crew to compensate for the human tragedy that is the after battle repairs and replenishment is also a must.

And thus my T(ryhard)ED talk is concluded. Monetarily refunding your time spent reading it is not possible and will have you contesting my space lawyer if pursued.

Burn drive, I find, is a completely different play style for a ship then normal.

I've had most success with larger ships like the onslaught where I tell them to execute a target from the second I see the enemy. Even if the enemy can teleport they will still be perused across the whole map. Which seems counter intuitive for low tech to be hyper aggressive like that.

But yeah if you can match the enemy fleet, ship for ship, you can... often just tag the whole enemy fleet for a burn drive 1v1 where their massed missile and forward facing ballistics can often push the enemy past the bring in one big heroic charge.

But this is anecdotal and relies of ideal conditions as frankly it's not entirely like other ship types can't do the same.

I suppose what I wanna say is that decent shields give you time, bad shields even with good armour don't. A change in perspective and tactics was what changed low tech for me to being a fun idea into something that can hound radiant battleships across the map rather then the reverse.

It can be done, but man if it ain't a lot more expensive risky work then braindead paragon spamming.

More or less what you're saying.
Sure, Reckless Ludd-For-Brains officer can do good work on Low Tech ships, but doing the same with either High tech or even Midline (Overridden Autopulse Sunders > Beam Sunders) is not only more effective but even poses less risks of backfiring.

What Low Tech does best, the other ship philosophies do better, unless it's Shield Shunt Armor tanking where only the radiant can reproduce similar results to XIV Onslaughts, XIV Dominators and Moras.

Anyone is entirely free of making of this fact whatever they desire, but the baseline concept of Low Tech being worse at 90% of the competitive fleet tactics that can be used in this game remains.

Low-tech will never be as useful as Mid-tech or High-tech ships and here's why:

High-tech: They have high shields, speed and very useful ship system. They also have special purpose ships such as Phase ships

Mid-tech: They have speed, weapon versatility and also very useful ship systems. They have special purpose ships such as Gryphon (missile cruiser) and monitor (tanker)

Low-tech: They have missiles and armor and crap ship systems (the only useful one is dumper field and it is given to a carrier lol)
Low-tech don't have special purpose ships so you simply can't make a competent late game fleet with them. Also, armor and missiles are the 2 things the AI is the worst at using. When you see your fleet dumping half of their loadouts on a kite, you know that missiles aren't the strong point of the AI. As about armor, that is one of the most useless stats in the game. In a fleet Vs fleet battle, shield is by far more important than armor. Also, armor value is only significant when it reaches above 1k, below that the ship will still get melted by late game threats. On top of that, in order to make a low-tech ship competitive, the player gotta fill it with hullmods to the brim, whereas high and mid tech ships don't need that many hullmods to be competitive

I hope Alex creates a low-tech ship that carries a special purpose (like gryphon, monitor, etc...). Something that has a ship system that slows down enemies would complement well the low-tech style.

I could see a future iteration of Starsector where one of these things (or maybe two, possibly three) happens
1)Low Tech Armor values get raised further
2)The entire Armor math gets overhauled to be more advantageous +
3)AI finally learns how to armor tank properly 

That is going to finally make Low tech stand on its own legs without actually developing more content for it. But more interesting/useful ship systems than "hurr go forward durr" could also help, despite taking time to both develop and properly balance.

Low Tech became the worst because the whole flux balance was broken. Now you can have flux sustainable double HB destroyers and triple HB cruisers. With triple the effective shield capacity compared to Low Tech counterparts. You need HeavyMG plus AssaultCG to emulate HeavyBlaster. That's 20 OP against 12. Previously it was compensated by the fact that HB needed much more vents to stay flux neutral. And Safety Overrides costed so much that it affected the whole build. Now you can install the needed mods as permanents for free. Take SO and be flux neutral. No more consuming your own flux pool by your fire. But you can't install weapons for free hence the double pay for the Low Tech. While you have inherently worse flux stats.

Missiles? High Tech can simply take multiple sabots on shields. No problem. Burst wise, small missile mounts are much better. DP wise, the only good thing Low Tech still has is the twin Large Missiles for 24 DP on the Atlas. Medium missiles are better kept on the Falcon (P), smalls on the frigates.

Highly mobile ships with inherently higher survivability thanks to a renewable in-game resource (which is shields and hard flux) will always be much, much easier to have good results in, especially under AI control, which is baically what ElPresidente writes here:

Friend, what do you think speed is for? Not only for getting you into range, but also KEEPING you in the range (or at max range).
Long range + mobility is a MUCH better combo than long range + armor/defense. You simply keep backing away, staying at max range, making the enemy annoyed beyond all measure.

The amount of things that need to be considered when egaging the enemy and coming ontop get exponantially higher the easier it if for the ship to move in and out of the engagement faster, have no damage to itself that sticks (like armor or hull) and have more damage intensive weapons at its disposal.
I'm under the opinion Low tech would be the "ugly duckling of balancing" from the moment it was conceptualized.
Anything that would massively improve its tactical options (i.e. Integrated Safety Overrides just to name one) gets a duct tape fix that does not really fix anything since it also applies to both High tech and Midline.
It's not an easy thing to fix, really, unless Alex starts introducing mechanics that affect ships differently based on what design type they belong to, which would be a balancing nightmare and a half by itself.

[Lucky33]

Do not even get me started on the mobility. Difference  between effect from the System Spec for the teleporter gang and for the burn drive is a sick joke.