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[bob888w]

Out of question why aren't hepastuses mentioned much in this thread? Is it because it's assumed the TPC can cover your HE damage and thus isn't needed?

[Thaago]

In my opinion its because the hardest enemies in the game are such shield tanks so kinetic is very in demand, Onslaughts have good missiles for either armor cracking or finishing off targets, and as you say the TPCs have fairly decent shot size on their own. Hephaestus are good enough weapons (and OP cheap) but their role of medium-good anti-armor and good anti-hull is just not as needed by Onslaughts because they have other things to cover the job.

I do think Hephaestus' can do pretty well on the side larges though for quickly killing mid size ships that might try and surround and onslaught. Currently experimenting with a 3x Hephestus, 5x HVD (all outer mediums), vulcans in the smalls and rear mediums, flaks in center, 4x Sabot though and its doing pretty well! Probably too little kinetic to take against ordos/Omegas but it sure chews through "regular" ships quickly.

[Drone_Fragger]

Best onslaught? As many armour and emp and weapon reinforcing mods as possible the dual machine guns or heavy machinegun in every slot. Then simply burn directly onto people and give them the delivery (bullets).
If you really want you can put some repears on the missle slots I guess.

[Arcagnello]

I will proudly stand by the one XIV Onslaught variant that turned my endgame fights into a joke:

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Horseshoe Crab (Shield Shunt XIV Onslaught)

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Hullmods on the ship because the list is too damn long to fit on the screen:
1) (integrated) Heavy Armor
2) (Integrated) Reinforced Bulkheads
3) (Integrated) Integrated Targeting Unit
4) Solar Shielding
5) Armored Weapon Mounts
6) Integrated Point Defence AI
7) Automated Repair Unit
Shield Shunt
9) Flux Distributor
10) Insulated Engine Ass(embly)
11) Advanced Turret Gyros (for the Mk.9 Autocannons and the Railguns that also double as Point Defence)
12) Expanded magazines (for the TPCs)
This thing is actually magical. It's got every single possible bonus either increasing armor, reducing damage taken (across armor and hull), boosting up Hullpoints, flux dissipation and damage done to the enemy (aside from Energy Weapon mastery for the two TPCs).
Why do I have 3600 flux generated by weapons when the ship only gets 1524 flux dissipation?
To make sure the thing fully uses all its flux dissipation to shoot weapons even if it's only using a portion of them, It also has an aggressive enough officer, enough armor, hull hitpoints and residual armor. This Onslaught has around 175 Residual armor spread across 30.000 hull points, and that's before we even count the -35% (or was it 45%?) hull and armor damage taken thanks to officer skills and 100% CR.
Officer skills (swear to all that Ludd loves that he was already named Ahmed when I got him)

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The only oopsie I made in setting it up was making Damage Control Elite instead of Target Analysis. The one thing missing is Reinforced Flux Conduits (I already have Shield shunt boosting EMP resistance, it felt useless) and Blast Doors, but who cares about losing crew members anyway when you can do this under AI control:

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Or this (story spoilers):

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And also that, without a single care in the world (more spoilers)

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You can also just send it into a sea of remnants and it will hold on for minutes while the rest of your fleet is busy elsewhere and is virtually unkillable by frigades unless they either got Reapers able to get thru the absurd point defence or enough PPT to kill it before they suffer critical malfunctions or end up getting crumped.

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You can most likely swap some of those dual flaks for more heavy maulers. the 6 Railguns at the front with IPDAI and advanced turret gyros have quite the amazing shield pressure but I could totally see people cutting those for vulcans and slapping heavy machineguns on all the medium mounts that had Dual flaks.

Bonus points if you also give the officer at the helm of it Elite Point Defence extending the range of all your PD weapons which will also act as assault kinetic damage dealers by 100 units ontop of gunnery implants and ITU.

[DDwarrirofire]

Old topic but wanted to revive it since I'm really enjoying the horseshoe crab.

Due to changes through the updates it did require some tweaking but the build was intact for the most part.

Changes
resistant flux conduits (+15 OP)
Shield Shunt (no emp resist and 5 OP cheaper now)
Max Vent cap with skill is now 55 instead of 60
Side large mounts are now Hellbore due to lower OP (I've considered making the 2 central Dual flakes normal flake to free up enough OP to put Mark IXs back on the side but haven't tested yet, seems effective as is though. The fires of combat will tell)

Current Officer (CR kept at 100%, 5% bonus per S-mod)
Elite Impact mitigation (armor resist, maneuverability)
Elite Target Analysis
Elite Ballistic Master
Ordnance Expertise
Elite-Point Defense skill
Gunnery Implants

Just sort of how the pilot ended up. My intitial impression was I thought it could do with more Vent and behold my pilot's final choice of skills weren't suitable for the ship except for Ordnance expertise. This thing is pretty relentless now with it's damage output which is protection in it's own right.

I'd like to play with swapping out something and putting in Elite Combat endurance+ Elite Damage Control which is a combo I enjoy. Or just swapping out Point Defense for Damage Control. DC just seems like it'd suit this ship to a T with it's huge Hull stat and keeping it's guns going which helps point defense in a way as well.

Unless I can find a lvl7 pilot with these skills+Damage Control but don't bet on it.

[Kernard]

Anyone else try this before?

3x Devastator Cannon
2x Flak Cannon on the rear arc.
4x Heavy Mortar on the sides.
2x Heavy Needler in the middle mounts.
1x Assault Chaingun on front.
6x Vulcan Cannons
4x Typhoon Reaper Launcher

Built in-
Augmented Drive Field
Ballistic Rangefinder
Heavy Armor

Other mods.
Integrated Targeting Unit
Flux Distributor
Armored Weapon Mounts
Advanced Turret Gyros.

52 Capacitors
55 Vents

Weapon grouping

1. 4x Typhoon Reapers
2. 4x Mortar + Chaingun
3. Thermal Pulse Cannons
4. Devastator Cannons
5. Vulcans and Flak
6. Heavy Needlers.


How this plays is that you basically are almost entirely fighter/missile proof.
In fact this is so extreme that you would need to temporarily switch off the Devastator cannons when use your reapers. Or they will get friendly fired.

When Brawling manual fire the Heavy Needlers to down shields.(Turning off  Thermal pulse Cannons or Manual firing Needlers in a close brawl will help sustain flux)
Selecting the target you want with the R key will direct the Devastators to chew through the armor in short order at the expense of your anti missile coverage.

Once armor down Vulcans will chew through hull.
I’m not sure about whether there is a better choice of missiles because this can be quite tricky to use.
Shields usually off unless fighting beams

Recommended on Pilot., Ordnance Expertise, Polarised Armor Elite, Impact mitigation Elite, Point Defense Elite. (For 500 range Vulcan instead of 250)
Some good skills
 Ballistics Mastery, Gunnery Implants . Target Analysis,
(It’s a Pity that Ballistics Mastery and Gunnery Implants don’t work on Point defense weapons such as Vulcan and Flak)

Btw the Devastator cannon is weird. With Ballistic Mastery and Gunnery implants, it has the max range of 1200(not reliable cos of scatter) elite point defense increases this to 1300. So Devastator is kinda hybrid point defense?

Swapping some Vulcan for Light Mortar/Assault Gun in a mismatched way also might work.
250 is dueling range but too close for a big fight.
The theory behind this is to use as many guns with a logical flux consumption(under 1.0 per unit of damage) and in layers with different ranges from shields/ armor to hull.

I did try a build with 4x light Needlers for anti shield  and thumpers/heavy mortars for medium weapons instead of so many dedicated point defense Vulcans also.
But personally I would prefer 500 range Vulcans as  25% of 500 dps(Vulcan) is respectable for hardly any flux at all.

Any thoughts?

[Schwartz]

When I field an Onslaught XIV, it's to wreck stations usually. So I bring this:
(Leave the Annihilators on Auto)

[Brainwright]

Not a great plan.  Too much focus on kinetic damage.

I'd actually swap out the forward HVDs for a pair of thumpers, swap one of the forward vulcans for a needler, and replace the two side large XIVs with Devastators.  Take out one of the vulcans on each wing, replace the dual flaks with heavy machine guns, place one flak on the rear mount, replace the other rear mount with an Arbalest, and then use the spare OP to replace all the Annihilators with Proximity Mines.

This will really screw with how the combat script handles things and make it act more predictably.

[Schwartz]

All Kinetic is high single-shot damage, and only a few Annihilators have to hit to completely erase armor, at which point Kinetic is as good as HE - and better, since you can spike shields and incapacitate any number of ships coming into range. I assume you're pulling my leg though, since you mentioned Thumpers and Prox Mines.

[Amoebka]

Thumpers and Prox Mines.

Both of those things are good in general and amazing on Onslaught specifically.

[Schwartz]

Alright, I gave that loadout a go. It has better PD but can't kill or snipe as well. In direct comparison, no, not as good, and I'm not seeing the upside of Prox Mines vs. dedicated long-range high-ammo HE.

But I'll play around with Thumpers and Prox Mines some more, admittedly haven't used them much.

[Goumindong]

All Kinetic is high single-shot damage, and only a few Annihilators have to hit to completely erase armor, at which point Kinetic is as good as HE - and better, since you can spike shields and incapacitate any number of ships coming into range. I assume you're pulling my leg though, since you mentioned Thumpers and Prox Mines.

Plus you always have the TPC for decent armor pen. They have 250 damage/shot, which isn't top flight armor pen but is "good enough"

[Brainwright]

Alright, I gave that loadout a go. It has better PD but can't kill or snipe as well. In direct comparison, no, not as good, and I'm not seeing the upside of Prox Mines vs. dedicated long-range high-ammo HE.

But I'll play around with Thumpers and Prox Mines some more, admittedly haven't used them much.

The primary point is to change how the combat script approaches the ship.  Like this, it should either stay away entirely or suicide charge the Onslaught.

And the mines are HE.  The real benefit is the PD doesn't prioritize them as highly.  Maybe swapping in two Annihilator Pods would make for a drastic effect?

[Thaago]

Prox mines are actually quite good, but they don't work very well on the turrets of an Onslaught. The AI tries to aim them at the closest missiles, but those missiles either impact or get shot down before the mine gets there, so the proxy mines just go flying off at bad/wrong angles constantly. They work well on the fixed mounts of a Dominator though because they just carpet forward towards the target.

[Euphytose]

Sorry, it's a basic Onslaught, but what do you think I should change here?

Thanks!

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