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[Arcagnello]

I've been noticing that in the past months a lot of threads in the General Discussion subsection of this Forum have been aimed at recieving feedback regarding the [Redacted], and about how they're quite possibly one of the hardest challenges in the game to overcome. A good thing to see really, since it means there are a lot of budding Starfarers in our midst now, I welcome you all!

I've also realized that despite these threads usually having a lot of vital feedback poured into them, the end result is always the same: they'll all get sucked into the void along with the thread that requested it and only to be replaced by a similar one -sometimes not even late enough for the previous thread to go into the second page of the thread list- asking the same things all over again.

This thread will aim at reducing this occurence; this poorly written, lacking in varied syntax thread with way too much Bold and Italiziced text polluting it is eventually going to contain a set of core concepts:
1)Listing every single buff [Redacted] benefit from, therefore understanding what makes the faction so strong
2)Showcasing all the [Redacted] ships with utmost accuracy
3)Describing how remnants fight thru their personality, weapon selections and how the AI uses its Command Points.
4)Elencating all the possible ways the player can buff its own fleet to compete
5)Teaching a number of varied fleet orders and methods to fight [Redacted] across different Player Fleet Compositions
6)Providing a limited number of Vanilla ship setups, Officer skills, fleet compositions and Player Skill choices that generally tend to work
7)Supplying fellow Slaves Of Moloch with a wide variety of Vanilla [Redacted] Setups to break the game balance with!

Thread Rules:
Be both constructive and polite and I'll be sure to listen.
I am no saint and I do make use of poor comedy and silly nicknames of things, but that's as far as I'm willing to have everyone go too. I can almost guarantee you this thread will have errors and incorrect data in it and I'm counting on the feedback of fellow seasoned Starfarers to straighten it out.
No Story Spoilers.
I am going to assume most players coming to this thread will be in search of pointers as to how to stand a chance against [Redacted] and nothing else about the game, especially no Story Related Content mention of any kind, not even the terrible nicknames I gave to various parts of it.

Without further ado, here comes the Text Wall!

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The things about [Redacted] making them the strongest faction in the game
Without going further into spoiler territory, Remnants are the strongest faction in unmodded Starsector. It is very likely you will suffer your first mid-to-late game fleet wipe at the hands of multiple or even just one decently sized Remnant Ordo. One of the main reasons and the first one this guide will cover as to why that happens is the well documented fact Remnants have the most buffs applied to them among every other faction in the game. In no Particular order:

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Plenty of AI Cores as Officers, putting the Galatia Academy to shame
Remnant Ordos/Sub-Ordos would not be any worse than the usual high end bounty fleets of 0.95 if it wasn't for the special properties AI cores used as officers have.
Alpha, Beta and Gamma Cores not only are always "fully integrated" into Automated Ships (meaning they get 8, 6 and 4 officer skills respectively), but every single one of those skills is also Elite, meaning that these cores not only buff Remnant ships much more than any Human Officer would buff normal ships, but they also massively skewer the Deployment Point balance towards the machines when even a relatively small Remnant Sub-Ordo fights you.

All AI core officers come with one personality type: Fearless. It's basically Reckless but even more insane
This is something which tends to take budding Starfarers by suprise in their first real encounters with the Remnant scourge. They. Will. Not. Back. Off.
The Fearless personality will more or less advance to get into weapon range of even the point defence weapons to get as much damage into the target as possible, the bigger ships are going to be much more likely to simply drop shields and still try to melt your face off instead, the Radiant is also infamous for just venting in front of you while on high flux instead of retreating just to do more damage.

All remnant ships come with 0.6 damage to flux efficiency shields
This is the staple of all Remnant ships. All their units come with an amazing 0.6 damage to flux ratio Omni-Shield, which is most of the time able to reach full 360° coverage with Shield:Conversion: Front, too bad there's no Variant in the Vanilla Remnant Roster that even uses that hullmod. This is also why the majority of the damage dealt to Remnants should be Kinetic, just don't forget about EMP and Armor Tearing or you will start regretting your setup choices the moment you start fighting cruisers and capitals.

Remnant ships have higher peak performance time, higher hull points and higher armor than their respective manned ship classes
Supposedly due to lacking crew compartments and therefore being able to dedicate most of their ship's internal space to components geared towards combat. This means that attrition battles with Remnants are nothing but unwise as having your fleet sacrifice potential strike damage for combat endurance will not pay off in the long run, since they just have more.

Remnant Ships are generally 15-20% stronger than their manned, equal Deployment Point counterparts from other factions
The faction as a whole is intended to be the strongest one in the game, making the fact mostly all their ships are undeniably stronger than similar ships from the other, manned ship factions. The problem however arises from both AI core spam further buffing their superior performance and certain ships (i.e. Radiant) being so far off this metric I'm personally baffled at the fact they haven't been rebalanced yet.

Better Flux Stats (almost) across the board
While generally packing a lot more "oomph" per Deployment Point, Remnants in general tend to have better flux capacity and dissipation than even high tech ships, with only two exeptions. A superior flux pool that can dissipate built-up flux faster massively synergizes with both Shield Modulation and High Energy Focus skills, not to mention the Fearless AI trying its best to fire all the weapons, all the time.

The Remnants have more "Commander SKills" for all their fleets
Instead of the usual 2 Commander skills all other factions get, Remnants get 3:
1)Flux Regulation adding 20% Flux Capacity and Dissipation based off of the base value, mking their flux stats as a whole even more overwhelming
2)Coordinated Manouvers adding up to 20% better top speed (and handling to match) by virtue of just deploying Frigates/Destroyers
3)Electronic Warfare which adds additional ECM Rating  which is also dependant on deploying enemy Frigates and Destroyers

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The Vanilla [Redacted] Roster
Here is a complete, detailed list of all Vanilla Remnant Ships, augmented by stats comparisons to other crewed, generally balanced vanilla ships.
Some important things I'd like you to focus your attention on are how bonkers most Remnant "stats" are compared to "normal" ships and how absolutely, unapologetically terrible most Vanilla Remnants Variants are, even without the intervention of the thrice-Moloch-cursed Autofit mechanic. 

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Lumen-class Droneship Frigate

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Lumen's Stats (above) compared to a Centurion's (below)

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Overview
This little devil is a Wolf with less weapons but better weapon arcs and improved survivability. It rarely does damage and it's mostly there to contest/capture points and sometimes shooting reaper torpedoes up your engine block. 4DP is suprisingly quite high for a ship with only 4 small synergy weapons, giving it more value as a distraction than a combat ship focused around dealing damage.
Vanilla Variants      Personal Rating:Teleporting Annoyance
Standard
Armament: Atropos Torpedo (Single), Swarmer SRM, IR Pulse Laser, Ion Cannon
Hullmods: Resistant Flux Conduits
Capacitors:6     Vents:10
And here we go with the Vanilla Variant Remnant Nonsense. Resistant Flux Conduits on this ship is nipples on a breastplate and so is both the Single Atropos Torpedo and the Swarmer SRM since the ship both has no expanded missile racks or a ship ability that improves missiles. It would work much better with 2 IR Pulse Lasers for shield pressure, a single Ion Cannon and a single Tactical Laser to force the enemy to keep the shields up. There could be some useful vriants using 1 Antimatter Blaster but there would have to be a lot of cuts for that one to fit, considering the ship only gets 35 Ordinance Points to play with.

Glimmer-class Droneship Frigate

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Glimmer's Stats (above) compared to a Wolf's (below)

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Overview
The Glimmer is, essentially, a Miniature Sunder and a Hydrophobic Wolf all in one. It has 1 medium energy, 2 small synergy and 2 small energy weapons all pointing forward for the bargain price of 5 Deployment Points, while also having High Energy Focus. It does suffer in the mobility department which greatly depreciates the frigate when fielded in AI fleets, mostly because Vanilla does not have any decent Glimmer Autofit using Unstable Injector, let alone Safety Overrides.
Vanilla Variants:
Assault    Personal Rating: Hazenut with Flux Asthma
Armament: Ion Pulser, 4x IR Pulse Lasers (Linked)
Hullmods: Unstable Injector
Capacitors:4     Vents:10
One of the nicest Remnant ship builds that's easy, straightforward and tries to mitigate the mobility of the ship. It could be better with a single tactical laser to force shields up, only two IR Pulse Lasers, Front Shield Conversion for the nice 360° shields and a spare small weapon mount that can be dedicated to some heap PD, like a PD laser or a mining one.

Support    Personal Rating: Passable Beamer
Armament: Graviton Beam, 4x Tactical Lasers (linked)
Hullmods: Advanced Optics
Capacitors:10  Vents:10
Again, this is a decent build. The Graviton Beam and the tactical lasers plus the shield generate more flux than the flux capacity of the ship with 10 vents, which could be somewhat mitigated by the addition of a flux distributor and front shield conversion instead of some capacitors. I would personally also install Unstable Injector again since the frigate really struggles to stay away from the enemy if it's pressured.


Fulgent-class Droneship Destroyer

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Fulgent's Stats (above) compared to a Sunder's (below)

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Overview
This Destroyer is very much a supersized Glimmer with significantly better missile strike capability at a poultry 11 Deployment Points. If you paid close attention to the stat windows and compared the Fulgent to both Sunder you will also notice its stats are quite comparable, if not worse in almost every aspect but shield to damage ratio. The overall stats are in line with other Remnant ships (namely the good shield ratio) but the base flux dissipation sitting at 300 more or less destroys the combat effectiveness of the ship entirely, especially considering it's even got high energy focus. Now, the ship would be somewhat decent if it used Sabots and a Phase lance/Ion Cannnon combo but that's not what Vanilla Starsector does. Oh no.
Vanilla Variants
Support   Personal Rating: Slightly Worrying
Armament: 2x Typhoon reaper Launchers (Alternating), 2x Sabot SRMs (ALternating), 2x Tactical Lasers & Ion Beam, 4x PD Lasers
Hullmods: Expanded Missile Racks, Advanced Optics
Capacitors: 10  Vents:4
This is exactly how you should not design a missile boat. All the missile weapons are on alternating instead of linked, the missile damage balance is massively skewed towards HE and there's not enough Hard flux damage to pressure shields with. Advanced Optics is also completely useless and even nerfs the PD lasers further. Investing those ordinance points into something actually useful like ECCM or Unstable Injector would work a lot better instead. The only slightly redeeming quality of this setup is that it will survive longer than most others and you'll still have to deal with it unless you want a nonconsensual date with Reaper Torpedos when the flux is high and you can't get away.

Assault     Personal Rating: Why Does This Exist
Armament: 1x Heavy Blaster, 2x Ion Pulser (Linked), 2x Sabot SRM (Alternating), 4x PD Laser (linked), 2x Tactical Laser (inked)l
Hullmods: Auxiliary Thrusters, Integrated Targeting Unit
Capacitors: 12  Vents:4
I just can't with this variant. I don't know who I need to have their location forwarded to the nearest Pather Cell for this unholy heresy. Does Vanilla Starsector unironically field a ship with 300 base flux dissipation armed with the most flux intensive continuous fire medium energy in the game plus two Ion Pulsers, no vents to speak of and without even overriding it?
This is litterally like mashing a Space Coconut into a glass without adding water, giving an Asthmatic Luddite a straw and then telling him "Go ahead, it's for you, drink!". Don't even get me started on why it even has Aux Thrusters or I might space myself out the airlock and into the nearest Blue Giant.


Scintilla-class Droneship Carrier

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Scintilla's Stats (above) compared to a Drover (below)

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Overview
This Destroyer has all the stats to be a great carrier, with the same ship system as the Astral  two fighter bays and decent flux stats/wepaon mounts for only being worth 12 Deployment Points.
The thing that makes this ship the worst ship the Remnants can field has to do with the absolutely atrocious Fighter LPC choices the faction as a whole gets.  It can either deploy Spark Interceptors, Lux Heavy Fighters or Flash bombers, none of which benefit from the Recall skill. I guess the only thing that can help the Scintilla if for our Lord and Saviour Alex to realize Remnants have no strike bomber LPCs and that basically all fighter bays on Remnants nerf them more than buff them 90% of the time since they're an Ordinance Point sink with little in-battle performance; also due to the fact any Remnant ship with a fighter baydoes not get buffed with any Commander Skill or even just Expanded Deck Crew.

Vanilla Variants
Strike          Personal Rating: Actually Competent
Armament: Typhoon Reaper Launcher, Sabot SRMs (alternating), 2 Tactical Lasers & Burst PD Lasers
Hangar Bay: 1 Lux Heavy Fighter Drone Wing, 1 Spark Interceptor Drone Wing
Hullmods: None, not even Expanded Deck "Crew"
Capacitors: 6   Vents: 13
This is a decievingly well defended Destroyer sized carrier. Too bad it does not have Expanded Deck Crew despite being entirely capable of installing it by cutting on Capacitors and some Vents. Don't asky me why, I don't know either.

Support      Personal Rating: Floppy Linguini
Weapons: Pilum LRM, 2 Salamanders (Alternating), 2 LR PD Lasers & PD lasers (Linked)
Hangar Bays. 2 Spark Interceptor Drones
Hullmods:  None, not even Expanded Deck "Crew"
Capacitors: 5  Vents:19
Talk about nonsense with this one. Everything about this thing is complete Onslaught Engine Block. It's got a Pilum and two Salamander Launchers (which are alternating, because of course they would be) but no ECCM and it's even got the worst Remnant Fighter LPC as of 0.95 without even agumenting its already Condor-worthy performance with Expanded Deck Crew. What an absolute waste of Deployment Points...I guess the only thing this thing supports while deployed against you is actually your fleet. Having a double agent bloating the enemy fleet with a nearly useless piece of shipware sure is helpful.


Brilliant-class Droneship Cruiser

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Brilliant's Stats (above) compared to a Dominator (Middle) and an Aurora's (below)

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Please don't mind the "Low Maintenance" Hullmod on the Dominator reducing its maintenance, which is from a mod called "Low Maintenance" by Zym.
Or do mind it and install it from its official thread link over here, since it's really good!
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=21715.msg327897#msg327897

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Overview
This asymmetric Cruiser a mixture of everything that's Remnant and is the only ship in the roster (so far) that can mount ballistic weapons, Two Medium Hardpoints worth of them in fact, along with 1 Medium Synergy Hardpoint, 1 Large Energy Turret, 1 Medium Energy Turret and 2 Small Energy Turrets. It's the second most potent Remnant ship in their roster at 25 Deployment Points and it's one of the only three ships that generally deal the most damage to your fleet along the Fulgent and the Radiant. There apparently is no Overridden variant in the Starsector Variant files, so it must be a rare occurrence for when the stars align and Autofit does something good for once, exept the fact the Overridden Autofits Starsector pulls usually also come with ITU, go figure.

Vanilla Variants
Standard       Personal Rating:  Annoying Shielded Gaming Mouse
Armament : 1x Plasma Cannon (alternating), 1x Sabot Pod (linked), 2x Hypervelocity Driver (linked), 1x Heavy Burst laser & 2 Burst PD lasers (linked)
Hangar Bay: 1x Spark Interceptor Wing
Hullmods: Integrated Targeting Unit

Despite the rather terrible weapon range synergies, this variant somewhat works and poses a hassle when faced not because it does a lot of damage compared to other Remnant Ships, but because it's incredibly durable for the amount of DP it takes to deploy, especially when it's got an AI of with Elite Shield Modulation at the helm and possibly even Elite Impact Mitigation, Reliability Engineering and Elite Damage Control.

Radiant-class Drone Battleship

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Radiant's Stats (above) compared to a Paragon's (below)

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Overview
Here we go. I'm going to have to go a bit off the rails in criticizing Vanilla Game Balance as a premise: the Radiant Drone Battleship is a balancing abomination that should've been adressed as soon as 0.95 released. The Remnants as a whole were a lot easier to defeat back in the 0.91 days and further back in time, but now that not only Officer skills but also AI algorithms have been improved along all the other new balance mechanics, the Radiant is well deserving of 60 Deployment Points, and this is accounting for the fact that the ship would be worth 70 Deployment Points instead if it was not Remnant and purposefully undervalued.
This ship is currently only worth 40 Deployment pointsbut is able to fit a staggering amount of front facing firepower consisting of 2 large energy hardpoints, 1 large energy turret, 2 large synergy turrets, 4 medium synergy turrets and 4 small energy turrets, in addition to 1500 Armor, 10.000 hullpoints, a 0.6 ratio shield, massive flux capacity, a ship ability that belongs to a Frigate and a 99% chance to always have an Alpha Core Officer making every single stat I just showcased that much more overbearing.
Disabling/Destroying the enemy Radiant(s) when fighting a Remnant ordo will translate in you winning that battle. Failing to pressure and kill it/them because it starts teleporting away and/or because the rest of its allied rabid honeybadger friends get in the way will guarantee a harder battle with more allied casualties and maybe even a loss.

Vanilla Variants
1)Standard        Personal Rating: Wasted Large Weapon Mounts
Armament: 2 Autopulse Lasers (Linked), 2 Locusts (Alternating), 1 Paladin PD & 6 PD Lasers (linked), 4 Ion Beams (Linked), 4 IR Pulse Lasers (linked)
Hullmods: Integrated Targeting Unit, Expanded Magazines, Heavy Armor
9 Capacitors, 50 Vents

Without going into potential modifications to the Vanilla autofit, this is a textbook example of how to NOT set up a Radiant and it's the setup you wish for when fighting an Ordo. Heavy Armor is a 40OP dead weight unless it's integrated, Locust not only do pathetic damage to anything but weaksauce frigates but they also don't even have expanded missile racks, 4 Ion beams is overkill even for me and IR pulse lasers are as pointless as nipples on a breastplate.

2)Strike         Personal Rating: Deployment Point Imbalance Incarnate
Armament: 5 Tachyon Lances (linked), 4 Sabot Pods (Alternating), 10 PD Lasers (Linked)
Hullmods: Integrated Targeting Unit, Advanced Optics, Resistant Flux Conduits
0 Capacitors, 50 vents

This is the most infamous Remnant setup in the whole roster despite being horribly unoptimized. It's more or less a testament to how the Radiant Stats are so broken across the board for a 40DP ship they are able to pull the suboptimal setups up in performance by sheer brute force. Advanced Optics is not only useless since the ship never makes use of that extra range but it also makes T-lances and PD lasers even more unwieldy to swing around and hit their targets. Sabots are both firing in ALTERNATING MODE and without Expanded Missile Racks.

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Things your own fleet should apply (or keep in mind) when fighting the Remnants
With all the things about the opposing force I just talked about, I hope you're ready for me to talk to you about how you could minmax your fleet to have a better shot at taking Remnant ordos, maybe even more than one at once. I will not go into any specifics about ship setups in this section of the thread, but I will make a list of what I think are the most important things you should heavily consider your fleet possessing in order to stand a chance. Do you need to follow all of them? Definetly not. Does following as many of them as possible dramatically increase your fleet's combat prowess and improve your chances against Remnant forces? Ludd yeah.

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1)Yes to fleetwide buffs, no to the industry and combat trees (most of the time).
I will agree on the fact the combat and the industry skill tree buffs are very good. They buff the strongest weapon in the game (your player piloted ship) and make it easier for your campaign to break the economy of the game sooner and not have to worry about money anymore (Industry), but unless you're a litteral pilot god driving the strongest ship in your fleet with absolute concentration all the time or youre breaking the game using 5 D-mod ships with Derelict Contingent, then these two skill trees are to be mostly ignored late game.
In order to have your fleet come close to the aburd levels of "concentrated murder" Remnants possess you'll have to spend the majority of your skill points in Leadership and Technology, not to get a few of the many fleet wide buffs but mostly all of them at the same time.
Weapon Drills, Wolfpack tactics, Coordinated Manouvers, Crew Training, Carrier Group, Officer Training, Officer management, Electronic Warfare, Fighter Uplink, Flux Regulation, Phase Corps and Special Modifications. You're going to need at least 10 of them with a skill tree that's going to look something along the lines of this one:

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With opportune modifications if you want carrier play, phase play or deploy Automated ships or not of course. You can probably have decent results without having this many skills into fleet buffs, but I can guarantee you you're inevitably going to feel your own player piloted ship is pulling the rest of your allied forces and not the contrary that way.

2)Integrated Hullmods and Minmaxed Elite Skill(s) officers are going to be your bread and butter when it comes to properly buffing your own fleet to deal with Remnant forces.
The minimum amount of either would be to have 2 Integrated hullmods on all your most important ships (let us have an example of 6 ships, 3 being capitals and 3 being cruisers)and one Elite skill on all your 8 officers (assuming you somehow have not picked either Officer Training or Officer Management. That brings the total amount of Story Points required to buffing your man combat force as much as possible to 20 Story Points, which in the grand scheme of things is quite the pittance.
I do call tht a pittance out of experience really, since my current fleet has 4 officered Capitals, 7 officered Frigates and 6 cheaper unofficered frigates with and endgame, fully buffed setup that requires 71 Story Points to Achieve:

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3)You will need to always contest the 4 buoys during battle.
All AI fleets including remnants will place "Capture" orders on each one of the 4 buoys that are usually deployed over the battlefield. Commanding your own fleet to do the same will not only make it much more likely that you're eventually going to be able to deploy as much as the enemy no matter the initial Deployment Point balance, but it will also cause the enemy fleet to spread thin trying to control the battlefield, making sure your own fleet is not at the end of very concentrated focus fire.

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4)While having decently long ranged weapons (of any kind) can make for a very useful tool for your fleet to deal with 90% of the things you're going to be fighting in Starsector, fighting Remnants revolves around mid-to-close range engagements against enemies that simply do not care about their own well being most of the time and are solely focused of hurting you and your friends as much as possible. I will extensively cover weapon choices for ships in a later chapter, but all you need to know for now is that mostly any non-missile weapon you can possibly use in your fleet with a maximum range above 900 units can be replaced by one of shorter range with minimal drawbacks and significant increases in damage potential.


5) Keep your main damage dealers togheder to fend off and ultimately deal with Brilliants and most importantly Radiants.
More or less no vanilla ship in the game can indipendendly fend off a single good Radiant setup or two Brilliants (especially if one or even both are Overridden). The trick to dealing with the most dangerous elements of Remnant forces is to have them attacking your main force while the rest of the remnants are spread out and then gang up on them in such a way it is going to be very difficult for them to retreat. Many tactics for this work but they usually revolve around having your main ships all focus fire on "the big guy" and either being mobile enough to keep with it retreating, like in this case with a Conquest accompanied by some frigates further confusing the now overloaded Radiant.

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I will cover peculiar fleet setups that have very little or even no ship variety in the following section of this thread, as they're more of a rarity than a common occurence.

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My Personal [Redacted] Ship Variants
I will admit I did not indend to write this section of this thread just yet, but a (not so) sudden demand of it arose in the past week or so so I felt the obligation of writing it early anyway. There currently are 22 Remnant Ship Variants in this section and they're all currently focused on providing better variants than the current vanilla Starsector has to offer.
I won't lie and tell you they're all amazing, since a good portion of them are setups pursuing a purpose, not to be the end-all version of the ship.
What's more, all the current variants shown here have the following core concepts to follow:
1)only weapons remnants would use so no mining lasers or mining blasters, despite them being in the Remnant weapon selection.
2)no halfmounting (not installing medium weapons in large slots or small weapons in medium slots)
3)no unused weapon mount on any ship
4)weapon groups stay autogenerated, no custom shenanigans or swithcing firing modes from Alternating to Linked (for now)
5)officer skills are not specified since the AI generates the officer skills as the fleet spawns with some unknown algorithm.
6)all ships were tested with unintegrated (and therefore with one less skill) Alpha cores for Capitals, Beta cores for Cruisers/Destroyers and Gamma cores for Frigates
7)all ships were tested with the active Commander Skills Remnants get, which are Flux Regulation, Electronic Warfare and Coordinated Manouvers

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Radiant
This is the ship that I've by far designed the most variants of. It can perfectly afford to use as many wierd, weaponized meme setups it wants and still be amazing due to how inherently strong it is. Some variants are a cut above the rest and I'm confident in your ability to tell them apart from the weaponized memes.
I've had to test the variants with the only Radiant I had in this save which already had Integrated Hardened Shields/ITU; luckily for me tough, those two Hullmods are more or less present on all setups  ;)

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Annihalator "A bad day to not have Point Defence"

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Synopsis: A variant focused on sundering medium to long range rocket firepower backed by enough energy firepower to force the enemy to think twice on approach

Preferred Target: enemy capital ships, heavy cruisers and fortifications

Overview:As per AcaMentis's suggestion to not use Hammer Barrages due to their weapon description more or less making their use on a remnant ship unjustifiable, I went ahed and swapped them for Squalls. The end result being a very, very pressure heavy variant that will overwhelm its target with double ECCM/EMR/Elite Missile Spec Squalls to then just delete it with the combined firepower of dual Plasma Cannons and quadruple Annihlator Rocket Pods.

Bastion "My Face Is My Shield"

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Synopsis: Focused on being an anchor to its own allies and providing long range fire suppression, this variant has almost all the required modifications to be as resilient as possible

Preferred Targets: Destroyers and smaller, enemy fighters and missiles

Overview: Keeping up the pace with more questionable variants, I really wanted at least one radiant to use a High Intensity Laser. It's quite a good harass tool when combined with 4 graviton beams and what most likely will also be officer skills. The Autopulses do decent hard flux damage and the Extended Mags buffs both those an the double paladins, which will ruin most carrier fleet days...just not as badly as the next variant on the list...

Eradicator "Frigates will meet their maker" Does not use Hardened Shields, only ITU

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Synopsis: a hybrid variant combining Sabots, Locusts SRMs and a couple of plasma cannons to quickly deal with anything cruiser sized and smaller

Preferred Targets: mostly frigates/destroyers and enemy fighters, struggles against good long range PD

Overview: this variant is my own personal attempt at improving the "Standard" Vanilla variant which makes me cry in bed every night due to how inefficient and unsynergetic it is. All small weapons are now IR Pulse lasers, both Autopulses and Paladin are still augmented by extended mags, the ship now has Expanded Missile Racks, Hardened Shields and ECCM instead of heavy armor and is using 4 Annihalator Rocket pods instead of the 4 Ion Beams. It would not be a bad idea to swap ECCM out for Integrated Point Defence AI so that the IR Pulse lasers act as makeshift point defence, but I really wanted those Locusts and Annihalators with as much likelyhood to nail the target as possible.

Lancer "Like popcorn in an oven"

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Snynopsis: a supremely medium to long range focused variant that can successfully overpower enemies with lesser shields under sheer beam pressure and superior flux stats

Preferred targets: anything slow enough that does not manage to get out of the firing line and that does not have Fortress Shield

Overview: another obvious variation of a vanilla variant, namely the "Strike" variant that really did not have much (if anything) to do with the word "Strike". The Sabots have been replaced by Graviton beams to both keep shields up and synergize with the tach lances, one tach lances has been replaced by a paladin to both not have the ship backpedal away from Pilums as often (and also because the ship can't handle 5), Advanced Optics has been replaced by Flux Distributor and the leftover ordinance points have been used to install Shield Conversion : Front. The variant does not actually use Hardened shields but is generally stronger than most other Radiant builds as long as it's fighting fairly immobile enemies that don't have good flux stats and whose generator is not overtaxed by firing too many weapons.

Autopulser "Yaaaaaaaa  ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta"

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Snynopsis: A burst-type variant that heavily leans into Autopulse fire with Tachyon Lance support

Preferred Targets: Anything with the misfortune of getting its attention for long enough time

Overview: This variant is, in simple terms, a nutcracker. It will punish its unfortunate target with a hail of some 180 Autopulse charges in short succession and then harass it with repeated Tachyon Lance fire, granting it some impressive armor tearing capabilities and therefore somewhat negating the struggle of Autopulse Lasers of dealing with the most stubborn of enemies. I had to install point defence litterally everywhere else tough, despite my vivid hatred of the Heavy Burst Laser.

Strike A-B "Your limited trial of Life has expired"
Variant A

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Variant B

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Synopsis: two slightly different variants featuring overwhelming Sabot suppression paired with devastating missile firepower but lacking in proper defense

Preferred Targets:: Stationary Targets, capitals, slow cruisers and destroyers

Overview: a vanilla friendly set of variants of the obiquitous "tryhard" set of radiant variants. The two setups are similar enough to eachother I ultimately decided to keep them both into "Strike".

Variant A tends to generally perform better when everything goes well due to having better burst damage, while Variant B has less energy weapon burst but a Paladin PD making it slightly more survivable when things don't exactly go as planned. Both variants heavily suffer from the lack of front shield conversion and resistant flux conduits, making them quite vulnerable under pressure.
Then there's also the issue of the various weapons on these variants being rather synergetic between eachother and therefore losing a lot of effectiveness when they're not striking the same target in rapid succession.

Paralyzer "Now let's see what you're made of. He is coming, you can't run" -Jugulator, Judas Priest

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Synopsis: an attack variant with the goal of meeting the enemy head on and quickly disabling it through massive amounts of EMP damage

Preferred Targets: Anything with the least amount of shield to go though for the massive EMP wave to start working, preferrably Frigates and Destroyers

Overview:A somewhat successful attempt at making the 4 Ion Beam "Standard" variant work. Turns out more hard flux damage is really good when you have 4 Ion Beams to fry everything on high flux with, who would've thunk  ::)
This variant generally works better the least hard flux it takes for the enemy it faces to be fried by the Ion Beams, but it can also spell unavoidable doom to anything it eventually overpowers with the 4 Autopulse lasers, as it's very unlikely it will be able to escape.

Tidecaller A-B "From the Sector a ship a shape is taking form"
Variant A

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Variant B

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Synopsis: unusual variant focusing on long range missile streams and a modest secondary armament to drive off anything getting close

Preferred Targets: Anything, as long as its point defence capabilities are medium to low. The smaller the individual enemies the better it tends to work.

Overview: I was going to finish fabricating variants for the radiant when I realized there was nothing to make Thaago happy, so I came up with these two variants that use quadruple Harpoons and Squalls with both ECCM and Expanded missile racks. This variant will both be able to delete anything getting overloaded from genuinely impressive ranges but also heavily suppress the enemy with a neverending wave of Squalls and a supporting array of energy weapons.

Variant A tends to work a lot better against anything the size of a cruiser and smaller, while Variant B has a much easier time against enemy capitals.

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Brilliant

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Beamer "Can you feel the HIL Mr.Krebs?"

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Synopsis: a highly unusual, strangely effective variant specializing into overwhelming soft flux firepower

Preferred Targets: anything not aggressive enough to compromise it, the less flux dissipation the target has to offset the beam weaponry the better

Overview: while I would normally consider a full beam Brilliant with no hard flux weaponry onboard to be amongst the biggest heresies this game allows its Starfarers to accomplish, it actually works. Very well too. Front shields and Flux disssipator allow it to fire more or less indefinetly with no flux buildup (therefore making shield modulation always dissipate hard flux, especially if the officer also comes with Elite Energy Weapon Mastery) and there also is some sort of AI behavioural bug making enemies nonsensically vent when there's an enemy HIL in range even when they're under 50-30% flux capacity, which you can see here: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=21978.0
I had to install tectical lasers because they ship got close to fire at the enemy with PD lasers otherwise. I was also more or less forced to pick Spark Interceptor Drones as the ship has no point defence to speak of outside the Active Flares.

Lancer "Building up the pressure, until you're feeling low"

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Synopsis: a long range iteration of the ship pairing a Tachyon Lance with supporting weaponry to pressure shields

Preferred Targets: destroyers and up sitting on the slow side of the mobility spectrum

Overview: a much more orthodox variant of the Brilliant, this guy will have much more success than the previous variant against ships with good shield ratios, especially if they're also coming with an officer. The significantly higher ordinance point costs of the weapon this variant has also prevented me from installing a very needed Flux Distributor. Installing some useful missile weapon like a Salamander or a Sabot pod would've been nice but I ultimately decided to go for a Graviton beam to prevent the AI from picking Missle Spec, therefore almost completely wasting an entire officer skill.

Overridden "Cursed, like this thread"

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Synopsis: a hyper aggressive variant with sundering firepower and not much time to use it

Preferred Targets: anything it can keep up with, missile and fighter heavy fleets

Overview: this variant has gone through quite a lot of modifications. I did not really want multiple overridden Brilliant variants (one is more than enough) and I ultimately decided on this one. The closest alternate variant had Hardened Subsystems but Thaago convinced me to install the Automated Repair unit instead, to make it much less vulnerable to be disabled through EMP. The ship has barely enough flux dissipation to use all its offensive weapons and keep the shield up despite being overridden, that's a Heavy Blaster for ya. I found the Overridden variant to be incredibly vulnerable to running away from missiles so I ultimately decided to use a Paladin on the large slots and it works really well. Here's just a simple example of how eliminating missiles keeps the Overridden Brilliant incredibly aggressive:

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The Paladin actually makes this the Brilliant able to deal with an entire Onslaught the fastest among all other variants, and one of the only three that can defeat 3 Dominators at once, besides the Beamer and its shenanigans and another one ;D

Versatile A-B-C "The Swiss-Remnant Army knife"
Variant A

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Variant B

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Variant C

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Synopsis: a balanced variant putting flux efficient weaponry and mobility above firepower for the sake of flexibility

Preferred Targets: Cruisers and anything smaller and not fast enough to get away

Overview: I really had fun with these two variants, but I also wanted to give remnants some weapons they were not making use of before, those being the Phase Lance, the Arbalest Autocannon and the Heavy Autocannon. I had so much fun in fact I couldn't decide between three variations of more or less the same design and decided to include all of them.

Both variant A and B have Unstable Injector making them reliably kite and win against 2 Dominators in the sim, sometimes 3 but that is a lot more RNG dependant. I pondered if I oculd give Variant B 2 Ion Cannons but ultimately decided not to. Variant C has flux distributor instead of Unstable Injector and Ion Cannons instead of PD lasers since it can now somewhat handle all weapons firing at once, giving it more firepower but less kite potential, making it much more likely than the other two at beating the Onslaught without taking all that much damage but also not be as good against multiple smaller ships.

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Scintilla
It's got two variants. They do just fine. I installed "expanded deck "crew" on them since they're carriers and all that but I guess you could swap that with something else, like Hardened shields or something.

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Support "I still hate this thing, it also works with Flash Bombers"

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Synopsis: A support oriented variant sporting heavy fighter support and costant missile pressure

Intended Targets: anything without enough point defence, really

Overview:I really wanted Remnants to have a carrier with good carrier pressure. That's it. It definetly works using Flash Bombers aswell, probably better too unless there is no allied remnant dealing hard flux damage to help the Flash Bombers punch through their victim.

Assault "Why are you making me do this, also works with two Lux fighters"

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Snynopsis: a close range variant combining fighter support with appreciable missile firepower

Intended Targets: anything that does not delete it before it gets close

Overview: This ones a slightly wierder variant that has a lot more bite to either draw off harassers and apply pressure to the enemy itself with sabots and some swarmers all the while keeping shields up with a couple of tacical lasers. You could probably either go full Lux or swap those Swarmers for single, 2OP Atropos Torpedoes (or Reapers) and get double Flash Bomber going.

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Fulgent
I was somewhat suprised at how decent the Fulgent is despite me dunking on it and saying it was the worst Remnant ship after the Scintilla. I still like the Brilliant a lot more tough :P

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Beamer "A healthy side dish of missiles"

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Synopsis: a long range direct fire variant that backs up its lackluster beam firepower with worrying amounts of missile strike damage

Preferred Targets: anything with worse enough stats or too high on flux to oppose it

Overview: decided to kick off the Fulgent variants with a very much "second line" focus. This bad boy will usually hand around his friends which tend to get a lot closer to the enemy and will stand ready to unleash a decent amount of kinetic firepower into the bosy enemy, usually followed up by a healthy doese of Atropos Torpedoes, making sure it's going to be able to nail even the squishiest of Frigates once it's overloaded.

Borer "Putting holes in happiness"

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Synopsis: a heavily specialized long range variant making the most use out of its ship system

Preferred Targets: Ships it can overpower with sheer beam firepower and the high energy focus

Overview: the 300 base flux dissipation on the Fulgent is so terrible it can barely fire 3 Graviton Beams and 4 Tactical Lasers. High Energy Focus really makes the damage spike at times, altough that's really not going to help this ship when it's going to fight an Overridden ship with more flux dissipation than brain cells. I could see those Swarmers being swapped for some easy Sabot pods just for that tough.

Overridden "Heard you were talking Ludd about the Fulgent"

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Synopsis: a relentless Sabot heavy variant with enough mobility to force the fight even when the enemy does not want it.

Preferred Targets: everything it can get a hold on, the worse shields it has the better

Overview: Here we go, the only Fulgent variant along the lines of what I would actually use in a fleet of my own. It's got everything an overridden ship needs to have aside from the absolutely atrocious 720 flux dissipation despite being overridden and habing flux regulation. That just makes me sad. Good old Tryhardgnello would've totally put an Ion pulser instead of the heavy blaster, stripped all PD in favour of extended shields (giving it 360° coverage) and filled it with as many Antimatter Blasters as could be slapped into a front facing position, but alas we got to adhere to some sort of rules forcing common decency here.
It might feel really strong, but the variant also suffers from the same issue most ships using a Fearless officer with a lot of weapons to shoot have, which is easily getting overloaded as they really like sticking to the enemy no matter their flux level.

Rocket "Neverdending stream of pain and suffering"

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Overview: a variant opting for rocket pressure and a supporting array of energy weapons to make it hurt once the flux starts getting high

Preferred targets: Anything that can't evade missiles or that does not have enough PD to shoot them down

Overview: I expected this bad boy to do a lot worse than other variants but it turned out pretty good, even manages to win against all three Dominator variants in the simulator

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with two of them successfully taking down the sim Onslaught by ultimately attacking from opposite angles

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I would expect a version using an Ion Beam to be a lot more...utilitarian in a fleet battle scenario, but the IR Pulse+Ion Pulser combo gives it more than a fighting chance when fighting enemies that want to get up close! Removing the ITU in favour of either more vents or even ECCM could be argued, but the ship has a really hard time closing the gap against enemies already, so much so I did not want to make it even worse.

Support "Obligatory Thaago appeasement build"

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Synopsis: A support oriented variant specializing in exploiting openings carved by its allies.

Preferred Targets:Anything its allies build up flux on

Overview:I had this foreboding feeling that this variant roster as a whole did not have enough Harpoons and that someone might disapprove, so here's one!
I sadly had to account for thi variant to also fend off for itself, meaning it had to be half Sabots. It will provide Harpoon support as soon as something in the vicinity is overloaded tough, and that's real nice.

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Glimmer
Ah, here it is, my favourite frigate in the entire vanilla game. How many times I broke the game balance with you my dear. I've decided on 3 very different variants that should synergize quite nicely with the rest of the Remnant roster.

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Beamer "Ant stole magnifying glass, Ant is going to hurt you now"

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Synopsis:A skirmish variant focusing on mobility and long range beam pressure

Prefered Targets: enemy frigates, sonar buoys

Overview:This is an annoyance. It will rarely kill anything but even the Reckless AI is not so reckless when all of its weapons have 1000 range or higher. Combine this with Unstable Injector and the result is a really annoying distraction that's moderately hard to get rid of, unless you have carriers or roided up SO Frigates of course.

Strike "Wait what happened to my frigate"

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Synopsis: An attack variant specialized on short range strike damage against unsuspecting foes

Preferred Targets: Enemy frigates, destroyers and unsuspecting foes

Overview:I suspected this might now work, investing OP in capacitors, luxury goods like Antimatter Blasters and even Unstable Injector, but the Glimmer always manages to surprise me. You might dismiss it as just another 5DP Frigate but this devil can neatly oneshot most Frigates and even some frail Destroyers like the Sunder if the sabots connect squarely and the AM blasters are yet to be fired into the target.

Overridden "Ludd left us and all that's left is violence"

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Synopsis: A very aggressive yet resiliant assault variant

Preferred Target: Enemy Frigates and Destroyers

Overview:Ah, this brings back memories of when I had 6 of these rabid squirrels zipping around the battlefield, all with fully integrated Gamma Cores and 3 Integrated Hullmods. The design itself barely had enough Ordinance Points to fit (almost) everything I would consider vital but it still retains almost all of its lethality.

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___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This will do it for today, just starting this endeavour has taken me a couple of hours.

Thread development roadmap:
1)Correct grammar and syntax horrors the moment I see them or they are pointed out to me
2)Add the third and fourth parts of this wannabe-guide
3)Provide screenshots for mostly everything, starting with Remnant ships and side-by-side comparisons to similar-DP ships
4)Add screenshots for both the third and fourth segment of the guide
5)Praise Ludd for granting me enough time in my life to write all this

Am I going to keep the thread updated through Starsector Updates?
Yes. Most Likely. Unless we start having Remnant issues in real life too.

Am I ever going to cover (in)famous mod-introduced Remnant ships like the Solar and the sadistic Phase Droneships into the guide?
Eventually. It's most likely weeks away from now and I'll make sure to keep them in spoiler tags to both keep the surface of this thread as Vanilla friendly as possible and preventing people from not sleeping well at night.

Am I going to include any (arguably) effective Remnant Ship setups for player use in this thread?
Nope, but I've got plans to have them somewhere else. Eventually. Yes!

Am I going to start linking this thread to anyone starting a new topic asking for help against [Redacted]?
Not for now. I'd say this sorry excuse of a guide is 25% complete if we're being optimistic. Give it a Week, or two. or a month. *Cries in hand aches*

[SCC]

How to use suboptimal ships, loadouts or officers and still win: get a Radiant.
How to win with combat spec character: get a Hyperion (more fun option) or a Doom (the stronger option).

[halloween20]

a little crop for the pics would be nice

[Arcagnello]

How to use suboptimal ships, loadouts or officers and still win: get a Radiant.
How to win with combat spec character: get a Hyperion (more fun option) or a Doom (the stronger option).

You won't find complaints from me on those two statements, no sir 
My first 0.95 campaign was won with a single Hammer Barrage Radiant, 3 Odisseys and 6 Overridden Hyperions (all with 3 Integrated Hullmods) afterall.

You will, in time, realize that I'm among the most guilty of abusing game mechanics in order to destroy game balance for their own amusement in this forum

a little crop for the pics would be nice

This may very well be because it's late over here in Spaghettiland, but what is a little crop for the pics?

[Sutopia]

I’m fairly certain SO brilliant is NOT a vanilla variant unless a mod added it or randomly chosen hullmod landed on it (extremely low chance)

[Arcagnello]

I’m fairly certain SO brilliant is NOT a vanilla variant unless a mod added it or randomly chosen hullmod landed on it (extremely low chance)

I recently saw a Vanilla stream on Twitch (no idea who it was, sorry again) where there was an Overridden Brilliant buzzsawing things around the field, with the only thing I remember it having (besides SO) being a Plasma Cannon. I'll edit the OP anyways tough!

[Sutopia]

I’m finding my old tactics work just fine tbh. An unpopular strategy, but it works.

Personally pilot a monitor with shield skill and 3 S mods. Physically assault radiant from its back so it wouldn’t be able to teleport back to vent. Win.

[Arcagnello]

I’m finding my old tactics work just fine tbh. An unpopular strategy, but it works.

Personally pilot a monitor with shield skill and 3 S mods. Physically assault radiant from its back so it wouldn’t be able to teleport back to vent. Win.

Indeed.
The enemy ship AI in Starsector has been confirmed to focus on whatever ship the player is at the helm of much more than any other thread on the battlefield. Exacerbate that with the most durable ship per deployment point in the game, officer skills and Integrated hullmods and you're going to have one mighty paper tiger for most of the enemy ships to focus on while leaving the other half to get blended by your own fleet.

The AI has seen massive improvements in the last years, but it's not good enough to negate these tactics yet, let alone properly use Omni Shields. It's one of the main reaons why I'm planning this whole guide to revolve around AI controlled player ships vs AI controlled enemy ships in the first place.

Are you ready to cringe? I'm going to show you something that had me rage out loud at the screen for a minute or two:

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More like Artificial Deficience, am I right?

[Thaago]

The AI doesn't focus on the player any more than other ships, but it does focus on ships that are in "vulnerable" situations: high flux, away from allies, near lots of enemies, small ship class, etc. An aggressive player is usually in those situations more than the AI (and rightly so), so then the AI tries to fire at that "vulnerable" ship. Its especially apparent for players flying frigates because I'm fairly sure the AI attempts to get quick kills on small ships (even when those ships are actually monitors and not a quick kill).

And yeah, shield handling vs HIL is uhh... not great at times haha!

[Arcagnello]

The AI doesn't focus on the player any more than other ships, but it does focus on ships that are in "vulnerable" situations: high flux, away from allies, near lots of enemies, small ship class, etc. An aggressive player is usually in those situations more than the AI (and rightly so), so then the AI tries to fire at that "vulnerable" ship. Its especially apparent for players flying frigates because I'm fairly sure the AI attempts to get quick kills on small ships (even when those ships are actually monitors and not a quick kill).

And yeah, shield handling vs HIL is uhh... not great at times haha!

Oh.
So that's why I could kite half an enemy fleet with my SO Hyperion in my first 0.95 playthrough. The more you know, thanks Thaago 

It may just be a me thing but I think the Omni Shield AI is even worse in 0.95 than previous major updates, I've even posted a bug report thread (that got moved into the "modded" subsection) because of it. It just considers even the smallest Fighter LPC to be as dangerous as an enemy capital ship. Here's one more example:

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As for the Conquest, it's really good vs Remnants if you got enough ships to only have it smashing one Remnant at a time. Too bad about the shield being Omni and 90 Degrees tough. I highly suggest both using Shield Conversion: Front and Extended Shield hullmods for that Sweet Sweet 240° degree shield.

[Hiruma Kai]

It may just be a me thing but I think the Omni Shield AI is even worse in 0.95 than previous major updates, I've even posted a bug report thread (that got moved into the "modded" subsection) because of it. It just considers even the smallest Fighter LPC to be as dangerous as an enemy capital ship. Here's one more example:

I'll point out that shield isn't deployed against the Lux fighters, it's deployed against the proximity charges and harpoons coming in.

Unfortunately, the AI isn't very good at predicting the impact location of ordinance, nor do I think it takes into account how maneuverable that ordinance is.  I think it just knows about its presence or absence, and the total magnitude of the damage.

To be fair to the AI though, that is 20 x 500 HE damage or 10,000 total HE in it's left rear arc, more than enough to wipe the Conquest out if it all connected to hull.  Plus another 1500 HE coming in from the left in the form of two harpoons.  If those proximity charges were actually aimed at the Conquest, it would likely be the right call to put the shield up against them instead of the plasma cannons.  Since the proximity mines are going for the Conquest in the back of the picture, it is not the right call, and the fact that they move so slowly, means it's making the same bad call for an extended period of time.  In order for it to make the correct call, it would have to not only know where ordinance is, but where ordinance is going as well as where the ship will be in a few seconds, which is a more in depth calculation.

At any given second, you'd want to protect against 10,000 HE rather than 1500 Energy damage.  What the shield AI needs is anticipation of impact time - which once you start bringing in modded weapons is nearly impossible to do with various two stage weapon types.

Edit: Another way to think of it, is imagine replacing those 20 proximity charges with 7 Hammer torpedoes coming straight in on the central Conquest.  Then the shield position makes much more sense.

[Arcagnello]

It may just be a me thing but I think the Omni Shield AI is even worse in 0.95 than previous major updates, I've even posted a bug report thread (that got moved into the "modded" subsection) because of it. It just considers even the smallest Fighter LPC to be as dangerous as an enemy capital ship. Here's one more example:

I'll point out that shield isn't deployed against the Lux fighters, it's deployed against the proximity charges and harpoons coming in.

Unfortunately, the AI isn't very good at predicting the impact location of ordinance, nor do I think it takes into account how maneuverable that ordinance is.  I think it just knows about its presence or absence, and the total magnitude of the damage.

To be fair to the AI though, that is 20 x 500 HE damage or 10,000 total HE in it's left rear arc, more than enough to wipe the Conquest out if it all connected to hull.  Plus another 1500 HE coming in from the left in the form of two harpoons.  If those proximity charges were actually aimed at the Conquest, it would likely be the right call to put the shield up against them instead of the plasma cannons.  Since the proximity mines are going for the Conquest in the back of the picture, it is not the right call, and the fact that they move so slowly, means it's making the same bad call for an extended period of time.  In order for it to make the correct call, it would have to not only know where ordinance is, but where ordinance is going as well as where the ship will be in a few seconds, which is a more in depth calculation.

At any given second, you'd want to protect against 10,000 HE rather than 1500 Energy damage.  What the shield AI needs is anticipation of impact time - which once you start bringing in modded weapons is nearly impossible to do with various two stage weapon types.

Edit: Another way to think of it, is imagine replacing those 20 proximity charges with 7 Hammer torpedoes coming straight in on the central Conquest.  Then the shield position makes much more sense.

That's some top notch observation skills,  fellow Starfarer!
I'll admit this was the most "dodgy" screenshot of Omni Shield AI behaviour in that bug report, but the fact the AI would have to theoretically take so many more things into account (with added possibility of things going wrong the more complex the AI would get) only highlights how good of a Hullmod Shield Conversion: Front really is, even on a ship that can't even get to 300° degree shielding with both that and Extended Shields like the Conquest.

It may get some issues raising shields against instand damage, long range weapon like tachlances but it's virtually better overall against mostly everything as long as you're not in a very crowded combat situation, in which case having an immovable 240° shield on something as mobile as a Conquest will get in the way of a lot of allies trying to shoot the target.

[Ad Astra]

Be both constructive and polite and I'll be sure to listen.

Pick one, final offer...

On a more serious note lol.
I'd think emphasis in mobility is important, not sure if you added that somewhere and I didn't read it, but slow ships against remnants are usually a terrible idea, no matter how hardy they are, the sheer firepower of a well fitted Radiant is overbearing. Being able to get behind other ships when high on flux is important for low losses against the angry blue boys.

Other than that, in cheese we trust when going against the zappy big boy.

[Sarissofoi]

Don't listen to him.
That is how a real man and follower of the Path do it.
Get officers - ALL OF THEM AND MORE(all reckless).
Pay some coin to dirty mercs.
Get 30 Path Cerberos(or 29 Cerberos and 1 Promethous Mk2), armor them and arm them properly(which mean Chaingun and 3xDouble MG or HVY MG and whatever)
DESTROY FILTHY DEMONIC AI FILTH WITH YOUR FAITH and a lot of dakka.

[Ad Astra]

Don't listen to him.
That is how a real man and follower of the Path do it.
Get officers - ALL OF THEM AND MORE(all reckless).
Pay some coin to dirty mercs.
Get 30 Path Cerberos(or 29 Cerberos and 1 Promethous Mk2), armor them and arm them properly(which mean Chaingun and 3xDouble MG or HVY MG and whatever)
DESTROY FILTHY DEMONIC AI FILTH WITH YOUR FAITH and a lot of dakka.

INFERNIUM MOLOTOV COCKTAILS WHEN???

Just imagine the luddie hanging to the side of a half broken down cerberus, trying to chuck a bottle full of antimatter fuel towards a freaking capital ship