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Author Topic: [0.95a-RC15] (To be) Exhaustive Guide on how to fight and field [Redacted]  (Read 27243 times)

FastestDraw

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Re: [0.95a-RC15] (To be) Exhaustive Guide on how to fight [Redacted]
« Reply #75 on: June 04, 2021, 09:25:51 AM »

Warning for anyone who tries the carrier group I described.

I decided to do some runs so that I could grab screenshots for the carrier setups - turns out it folds like wet cardboard to the drone battleship (which apparently uses teleport to dodge rocket barrages better than phase frigates).

Will be tweaking to see if throwing a gryphon or two into the mix is enough to cope with that, or if more sabots+Xyphos let me lock it down with EMP, but use at your own risk.
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Arcagnello

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Re: [0.95a-RC15] (To be) Exhaustive Guide on how to fight [Redacted]
« Reply #76 on: June 04, 2021, 09:39:50 AM »

Warning for anyone who tries the carrier group I described.

I decided to do some runs so that I could grab screenshots for the carrier setups - turns out it folds like wet cardboard to the drone battleship (which apparently uses teleport to dodge rocket barrages better than phase frigates).

Will be tweaking to see if throwing a gryphon or two into the mix is enough to cope with that, or if more sabots+Xyphos let me lock it down with EMP, but use at your own risk.

I was just thinking about that.
"Wait he can kill Radiants with that? Interesting!"
If you're dead set on using a Gryphon then I suggest you to use a direct fire variant aimed at driving off Remnants that has 1x Hammer Barrage/Cyclone Reaper Launcher, 3x Annihalator Rockets in the small hardpoints and double sabots on the side mounted medium hardpoints. Every other mount is for either light machineguns or a Heavy Machinegun.

Annihalator Rockets definely go in the same weapon group as the hammer barrage and all fire in Linked mode. Sabots are also both linked togheder in their weapon group and fire in linked. I have not tested if Linking the Annihalator Pods with a Cyclone Reaper Launcher and having them fire linked togheder works, but it should. The Idea there would be that the ROckets will distract the enemy point defence from shooting down the two Reaper Tordpedoes.

Hullmods to integrate would be Hardened Shields, ECCM and a choice between unstable Injector and Nav Package, unless you also got enough other ships to boost Nav up to 20%. Additional Hullmod is Solar Shielding

Rest of OP goes into capacitors and vents with a 2:1 spread

Preferred officer would be Aggressive/Reckless with 1)Elite Missile Specialization 2)Helsmanship 3)Reliability Engineering 4)Shield Modulation 5) Elite Target Analysis 6)Systems Expertise. Cut on Target Analysis if you don't have the skill allowing for level 6 commander with two ELite skills.


Edit: Updated the Guide with the Glimmer-class Droneship Frigate in the Vanilla [Redacted] Roster. I'm trying a different format that shows the ship sprite torn off the Codex and out of the spoiler window. DO you like it better that way? I may just apply it to every other Remnant Ship Entry.

Edit 2: I have finally completed the Vanilla [Remnant] Roster section of the guide. I'm planning to expand the new format both Lumen and Glimmer have to all the other ships. I find the sprite of each ship being visible outside the spoiler tags to be very useful. I guess it's going to help in case someone gets "reverse farmed for Human Cores" by Remnants, then searches the forum for help, hopefully finds this thread (instead of starting another discussion, that would disappoint me somewhat) and is able to quickly identify the Remnant ship that did the most "Harvesting" just by looking through pictures :)

Edit 3:Finished updating the Vanilla [Remnant] Roster and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. I will focus on putting more work into the first/third paragraph and begin to write the fourth one about different fleet tactics tomorrow  :)
« Last Edit: June 04, 2021, 12:33:27 PM by Arcagnello »
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Arcagnello

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Re: [0.95a-RC15] (To be) Exhaustive Guide on how to fight [Redacted]
« Reply #77 on: June 05, 2021, 04:44:19 AM »

Update: I've finally decided on what the final "structure" of this guide will look like and updated it in the "To be developed" part of the OP:
Quote
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 aimed at:
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 way 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

I'm planning on restructuring the first and third paragraph today to not be a hodgepodge of everything, I do have one question in the meanwhile:

Are the three Commander Skills the faction can get applied to their forces always present on ALL their fleets, or does the fact the [Redacted] could be dormant or come in Fragments/Sub-Ordos/Ordos change it somehow?
Quote
For reference, weapon_data.csv in starsector-core\data\weapons has a list of all the game's weapons and their corresponding internal ID used by variants. In case you run into more that don't translate 1:1.

Also, something that might be worth noting in the OP from remnants.faction:
Quote
"commanderSkills":[ # unlike other factions, can get up to 3 skills depending
   "electronic_warfare",
   "flux_regulation",
   "coordinated_maneuvers",
],
So yeah, apparently Remnants can randomly be even more ECM-happy, faster and/or more flux efficient than their raw stats would suggest. Because, you know, Radiants clearly needed extra buffs. Couldn't be competitive without it...

Edit: Alright let me just quote the entire current OP so that nothing is lost in the void while I re-structure it.
Spoiler
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 aimed at:
1)Listing every single buff [Redacted] benefit from, making them 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 way 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



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 we go!

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Things about [Redacted] you need to know
Before we can tackle the minmaxing torture that is player choices and fleet designs/tactics, we must focus on what makes Remnant forces so overwhelmingly potent in 0.95a-RC15 and future patches, in no particular order:

1)Most of non-dormant Remnant Fragments, Sub-Ordos and Ordos tend to field most their ships with AI cores as officers.
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.

2)All AI core officers come with one personality type: Fearless. It's basically Reckless but even more insane.
-They will stick to your ships for unhealthy amounts of time even if their flux is barely under the Overload Theshold. The only two things that will ever drive them away are overloads and some 90% hard flux buildup, while under fire.
-They will litterally vent right in front of you if you only have low damage kinetics and their ships still have most of their armor and hull points, you can usually see this exact behaviour on the radiant Drone Battleship
-They seem to care a lot less about being attacked from all sides by your fighters when it comes to advancing and trying to blend your ships, but it will affect their weapon tageting and sometimes confuse them nonetheless

3)All remnant ships come with 0.6 damage to flux efficiency shields, which is the best value in the game, making it extremely hard for sporadical kinetic fire to inconvenience their advance. The fact they usually have AI cores with Elite Shield Modulation letting them dissipate hard flux while the shield is on aswell as reducing incoming HE damage to shield by 25% (and of course a reduction in shield damage taken overall) does not help either.


4)Most 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 mostly unwise as having your fleet sacrifice potential strike damage for combat endurance will not pay off in the long run.

5) Remnant forces as a whole tend to deal (from most present to rarest) Energy, EMP and Kinetic damage. There are a number of exeptions but the general trend of Remnant forces trying to hug you suggests retrofitting your own ships that are as able to resist significant damage spikes of all those 3 damage types at once as much as possible, which usually involves Hardened Shields, Solar Shielding, Resistant Flux Conduits and Automated Repair Unit on the biggest player ship being deployed.

6)The Remnant's inherent, nearly suicidal Officer personality and the fact energy/missile weapons mostly being medium-to-short range focused makes it so the entirety of the Remnant ship roster tends to fight at very, very short range.
This could also trick you into building up a fleet revolving around long range kiting (alongside the fact not many Remnants are not all that good in the mobility department) only to realize there's one exeption to this trend which is going to ruthlessly punish you for this fleet choice.

7) I honestly do NOT know what's going on with the way Vanilla Starsector autofits Remnant ships. Sometimes they've got a decently performing and synergized setup on their ships while the rest of the time most Remnant ship Autofits are incredibly, incredibly bad. This leads to  fights against the faction to wildly vary betwen "annoying shield walls with pathetic weapon synergies" to "OH Sweet Ludd why does it have 5 Autopulse Lasers and 4 Sabot Pods?!"

8)Remnant Ships are generally around 20% cheaper to deploy when compared to manned counterparts with similar performance. This is intended since they are supposed to be stronger on a per-ship basis than you. 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.

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 Remnants thats are compared to "normal" ships and how absolutely, unapologetically terrible most Vanilla variants are, even without the intervention of the thrice-Moloch-cursed Autofit mechanic. 

Lumen-class Droneship Frigate

Codex Entry
Spoiler
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Glimmer's Stats (above) compared to a Centurion's (below)
Spoiler
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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. I would have it rebalanced at 3DP unless it's scheduled to get a secondary ship ability like fast missile racks or even missile autoforge in the future.
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.

Glimmer-class Droneship Frigate

Codex Entry
Spoiler
[close]
Glimmer's Stats (above) compared to a Wolf's (below)
Spoiler
[close]
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. 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, let alone Overridden Glimmers.
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 main issue of the ship: it's a Frigate with no mobility focused ship ability that's not all that mobile in the first place either. 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. I would alternatively forsake installing Unstable injector and swap that Graviton for an Ion Beam, which would make the ship much more useful in a supporting role.


Fulgent-class Droneship Destroyer

Codex Entry
Spoiler
[close]
Fulgent's Stats (above) compared to a Sunder's (below)
Spoiler
[close]
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 KInetic to break shields. What's even worse is that the only other 3 non-PD energy weapons don't even deal hard flux damage. Advanced Optics is also completely useless and even nerfs the PD lasers further. Investing those ordinnce 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.

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

Codex Entry
Spoiler
[close]
Scintilla's Stats (above) compared to a Drover (below)
Spoiler
[close]
Overview
This Destroyer has all the stats to be a great carrier, having 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 it has. It can either deploy Spark Interceptors or Flash bombers, neither of which benefit from the Recall skill. I would keep it at 12OP and wait 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, unless you forget kinetic/high explosive point defence and get ravaged by flash bombers.

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

Codex Entry
Spoiler
[close]
Brilliant's Stats (above) compared to a Dominator (Middle) and an Aurora's (below)
Spoiler
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
[close]
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 missile, 1 large energy, 1 medium energy and 2 small energy. 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.

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 an AI officer with Elite Shield Modulation and possibly even Elite IMpact Mitigation and Elite Damage Control is sotting at the helm.


Radiant-class Drone Battleship

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

[close]
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.



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.

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:
Spoiler
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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:
Spoiler
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Spoiler
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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.
Spoiler
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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.
Spoiler
[close]
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.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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.

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 20% complete if we're being optimistic. Give it a Week.
[close]
« Last Edit: June 05, 2021, 04:48:38 AM by Arcagnello »
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AcaMetis

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Re: [0.95a-RC15] (To be) Exhaustive Guide on how to fight [Redacted]
« Reply #78 on: June 05, 2021, 04:52:38 AM »

Quote
Are the three Commander Skills the faction can get applied to their forces always present on ALL their fleets, or does the fact the [Redacted] could be dormant or come in Fragments/Sub-Ordos/Ordos change it somehow?
Those last three are just different names for different fleet sizes:
Quote
   "fleetTypeNames":{
      "patrolSmall":"Fragment",
      "patrolMedium":"Sub-Ordo",
      "patrolLarge":"Ordo",
      "battlestation":"Nexus",
   },
What matters for commander skills is a fleet's faction, and even dormant ships still belong to the Remnant faction. I don't know if there's other factors that matter, but I don't think so.
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Re: [0.95a-RC15] (To be) Exhaustive Guide on how to fight [Redacted]
« Reply #79 on: June 05, 2021, 04:57:04 AM »

Quote
Are the three Commander Skills the faction can get applied to their forces always present on ALL their fleets, or does the fact the [Redacted] could be dormant or come in Fragments/Sub-Ordos/Ordos change it somehow?
Those last three are just different names for different fleet sizes:
Quote
   "fleetTypeNames":{
      "patrolSmall":"Fragment",
      "patrolMedium":"Sub-Ordo",
      "patrolLarge":"Ordo",
      "battlestation":"Nexus",
   },
What matters for commander skills is a fleet's faction, and even dormant ships still belong to the Remnant faction. I don't know if there's other factors that matter, but I don't think so.

I'll just write the OP assuming all three Commander Skills are just smothered across all possible [redacted] units at all times then! Thanks again my man!

Question: Say you're fighting two Ordos at the same time and that neither goes above 240 Deployment Points in total.
Does Flux Regulation apply 100% of its bonus to both fleets or is the total DP of the combined fleets taken into account while calculating the extra flux capacity/dissipation bonus, therefore having all [redacted] ships not recieving the full 20% buff?
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AcaMetis

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Re: [0.95a-RC15] (To be) Exhaustive Guide on how to fight [Redacted]
« Reply #80 on: June 05, 2021, 05:12:39 AM »

Quote
I'll just write the OP assuming all three Commander Skills are just smothered across all possible [redacted] units at all times then! Thanks again my man!
The file does say up to three skills, though I've no idea what the odds of how many skills are and preparing for the worst is a better strategy than hoping for the best so...point.

Quote
Question: Say you're fighting two Ordos at the same time and that neither goes above 240 Deployment Points in total.
Does Flux Regulation apply 100% of its bonus to both fleets or is the total DP of the combined fleets taken into account while calculating the extra flux capacity/dissipation bonus, therefore having all [redacted] ships not recieving the full 20% buff?
Good question. I don't think going into battle with allies from your own faction would nerf your command skills, so I'm inclined to say "no". Either Alex, a code diver or someone with a very clever plan to test this ingame would have to confirm, though.

Another question along the same vein, actually: Say that one fleet rolled Electronic Warfare as their commander skill and the other Flux Regulation, and you engage both fleets simultaneously. Will only the EW fleet ships contribute their ships' value to the entire fleet's ECM rating? If not, does that mean the EW ships also benefit from FR, since apparently commander skills are shared? If yes, does FR's DP limits consider both fleets or only the DP of the fleet that has that commander skill?

There's a series of possible answers here that could make engaging multiple Ordos at one really sketchy...
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Re: [0.95a-RC15] (To be) Exhaustive Guide on how to fight [Redacted]
« Reply #81 on: June 05, 2021, 05:34:44 AM »

You know starting this thread and reading it through the replies has been like reading Made In Abyss (and its Manga) all over again!
That's the first episode, just for reference.
Spoiler
[close]
"It couldn't possibly get any w-
*goes in deeper*
"Nevermind it always gets worse"
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Re: [0.95a-RC15] (To be) Exhaustive Guide on how to fight [Redacted]
« Reply #82 on: June 07, 2021, 04:31:59 PM »

Had some eventful days as of late, leaving the required time and effort for this thread wanting. I am mostly back to normal now!

Edited the OP with yet another to-be-completed segment of this guide that's eventually going to shape up like "everything that's remnant" in the far far future in a Sector far far awayTM

Following a rather sizeable amount of demand from various friends using different platforms asking for it in the past week, I've added a segment introducing my own Remnant ship variants.

Only the first three entries are in their completed formatting state, the other ones are just the name of the varaiant with some stupid meme or famous phrase (or lyrics from a song I like) in quotation marks. They should all perform nicely and fulfill their intended "role". Feedback and discussion on each and every one of those variants is welcome tough.

The Variants are all mostly there (there's currently 22) aside from the Lumen. I'm planning on splitting the "Strike" variant of the Radiant Drone Battleship into two different ones. The first is going to use Hammer Barrages and two Plasma Cannons while the other one is going to make use of twin Cylone Reaper Launchers plus two, maybe three Autopulse lasers with Extended magazines.

Enjoy!
« Last Edit: June 07, 2021, 05:40:15 PM by Arcagnello »
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Update: further fleshed out the variant entries
-split the "Strike" Radiant into two better functioning variants
-added the "Paralyzer" Radiant, a somewhat successful attempt at making 4 Ion Beams functional, rather similar to the "Pulse" iteration but with significant differences
-added two "Tidecaller" variants for the Radiant, an unorthodox specialization making use of both Squalls and Harpoons. Thaago visited my dreams and told me about the one true deity of the battlefield, the Harpoon MRM Pod. I just had to do something to make him happy.

Completing this "vanilla compatible" set of (mostly) non-tryhard Remnant Variants should be possible within today. Crossing fingers.
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Update!
More or less completed my variant collection at the bottom of the OP. It is  now is made of the grand total of 23 variants, of which
-9 Radiant Variants (plus two extra subvariants)
-4 Brilliant Variants (plus two extra subvariants)
-2 Scintilla Variants
-5 Fulgent Variants
-3 Glimmer Variants

This took way longer than I had planned due to adding more variants as I went, testing and improving all of them (there have been some significant changes of the variants from my last post, just don't ask me which ones) plus writing descriptions, taking screenshots and showcasing their capabilities with words so that some of my design choices could be understood. I am going to add the two Lumen variants tomorrow, altough the ship isn't that impressive in any way, shape or form and you're not really gonna miss much.

I'm going to finally start working on the section of the OP that I actually intended now, Ludd forsake my sidetracking :P
« Last Edit: June 11, 2021, 03:11:59 PM by Arcagnello »
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Quote
This one uses Annihalator Rocket Pods and Hammer Barrages, two weapons that I don't think Remnants get to use at all.
You can check what weapon blueprints a faction has access to in their .faction file. For reference Remnants know every type of missile weapon that the Black Market can have on offer, so I'm not sure why they'd shy away from ever using those two. Too large a pool for the random autofit to consistently draw from, I suppose?
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Quote
This one uses Annihalator Rocket Pods and Hammer Barrages, two weapons that I don't think Remnants get to use at all.
You can check what weapon blueprints a faction has access to in their .faction file. For reference Remnants know every type of missile weapon that the Black Market can have on offer, so I'm not sure why they'd shy away from ever using those two. Too large a pool for the random autofit to consistently draw from, I suppose?

Oh! Good catch!
I wish they got some Vanilla Variants using Annihalator Rocket Pods, Hammer Barrages or even both in the case of the Radiant. Flux Free pressure is very good, especially on ships that generally don't have access to ballistic weapons and usually rely on energy damage to pressure shields.

...wait, does this imply Remnants will potentially get new weapons to play with if you sell blueprints of weapons on the Black Market they somehow don't know yet? That's hilarious  ;D

Edit: I've edited the post you quoted to be more accurate

Edit 2: fixed the "Autopulser" Radiant variant, it still had the old variant refit screenshot.
« Last Edit: June 11, 2021, 03:48:46 PM by Arcagnello »
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...wait, do you mean to tell me that Remnants will potentially get new weapons to play with if you sell blueprints on the Black Market they somehow don't know? That's hilarious  ;D
Unfortunately I think only Pirates have that mechanic, no other faction learns blueprints you sell them from what I recall ::). Remnants honestly don't need to be sold any blueprints anyway - they're one of the best equipped factions in the game as is, and with the most OP ship in the game (by base stats) to boot.

As for why the Hammer Barrage specifically isn't used by Remnants, now that I think about it, probably because Tri-Tachyon didn't see merit in outfitting their automated fleet with, basically, militarized mining tools back during the first AI war. I mean, here's the weapon's description:
Quote
This dumb-fire rocket was ubiquitous in the Sector pre-Collapse due to civilian applications discovered by asteroid miners. The go-to strike weapon of the desperately under-equipped, the Hammer is most often employed by poor independent militias, Pirates, and especially the Luddic Path. This has led to the mildly blasphemous alternative name for the weapon, "Ludd's Hammer".

The Hammer Barrage mount provides a stirring example of the expediency of quantity.
Doesn't sound like something you'd find on a Radiant, TBH. Couldn't give an explanation for Annihalator Rocket Pods, though.
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That logic behind Remnants not using the Hammer Barrage does make a lot of sense, unless we're willing to hypothesize that they scavenged Hammer pods and the Hammer Barrage from both the Luddic Church and the Pathers during their ongoing crusades on the fringes of the sector to hunt the slaves of moloch  :)

As for the Radiant variants making use of the Hammer Barrage, do you have any ideas to add to my own?
Annihalator:
Spoiler
[close]
I was thinking of making it quite filthy in the rocket department by swapping the Barrages for two Squalls, they'd already have both EMR/ECCM and they pop out disgustingly fast with Elite Missile spec. It would also add much welcome EMP damage to the ship's damage mix, which it currently lacks.

The fact I am just 12OP short from being able to fit that variant with 2 Plasma Cannons at the front and a Paladin in the back saddens me to no end, altough I guess 2x Autopulse with expanded mags pressures shields in a burst much more efficiently.

Strike B
Spoiler
[close]
I will most likely swap the 4 front IR Pulse Lasers for PD lasers, cut 6 vents and install two Cyclone Reaper Launchers instead on this guy.
The fact Vanilla does not give us a large Annihalator Rocket missile mount or a medium/large one for Atropos Torpedoes saddens me to no end. Thank Ludd for mods helping me in that regard, altough I don't think anyone has introduced a simple large missile mount firing annihalators yet   :'(

Edit: Nevermind my speculation on the Annihilator variant of the Radiant. I can fit two Plasma Cannons at the front  :P

2xAutopulse + Expanded Magazines + Plasma Cannon = 40+10+30 = 80

2xPlasma + Paladin PD = 60 + 18= 78
« Last Edit: June 11, 2021, 04:24:12 PM by Arcagnello »
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I use 5 Glimmers with integrated gamma cores with integrated

Hardened shields, ITU, and front shield conversion

front shield conversion actually makes the ai stay alive for way longer lol and they count towards the officer limit meaning you can deploy a lot more when fighting enemy remnants
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