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[RustyCabbage]

Just FYI, these are the sorts of fleets you can take in a single engagement with an appropriately-skilled, vanilla SO-Hyperion wolf pack.


(plus like three more rows of frigates and destroyers that didn't fit into the screenshot)

SO Hyperions are pretty good! (but as Megas says, probably not something you want to emphasize too much without a few Leadership skills)

[Thaago]

Tsk, losing 30 crew vs multiple ordos. :p

[SafariJohn]

3 were rescued, so it was only 27 lost.

[Wapno]

Well that means you do not have played enough yet or always played wrong with Hyperion.

The "it aint tru, u just bad at gaym" is so far the most childish argument I saw in defense of this ship.

A kite? You here being hyperbolizing on ill state. Hyperion is unsinkable, literally. It got monstrous flux stats and impenetrable shield.

I am still baffled with just where are you pulling those bizarre statements from. No, it is not unsinkable, literally. Its shield is nowhere near impenetrable cause *cough*destroyergradefluxstats*cough*, and as soon as it goes down (or - heaven forbid - AI overloads), the only thing standing between it and death is paper armor and 2.5k hull integrity.

There's nothing that proves your point. Hyperion is unique ship which can travel entire battle map within couple of jumps. In a fights where forces are separate across the map it's priceless. It's a frigate and got battleAI as a frigate, it take harassing turns, it seeks vulnerabilities, it swarms in pair of other frigates. I got all proof of that in a video format loaded on youtube.

There is nothing you're doing to disprove my perfectly valid point either. Aside from teleporting (which in practice just means a lot of speed) nothing of what you're described other ships aren't doing already. Why would I choose a super-fast, stupidly expensive ship, if I can field a much stronger ship, which is slower, but still fast enough to reach the objective point before the enemy, AND doesn't have a whole baggage of other issues with it?

What cost are you talking right now? 15 DP? FITHTEEN DEPLOYMENT POINTS? Is this TOO much to handle?? A cost of a destroyer? Please do not mention 30 supplies, it's irrelevant in a battle and doesn't even much in a game economy. You can pay this even at the beginning of the game and feel no poverty.

Yes it is? Because for just one more DP, I can field two Tempests/Scarabs, which I can send to two opposite goals at the same time (which they will also get to quite fast) and will stay in battle for a lot longer. On top of that, 40 bloody CR per deployment. Hope you don't have to fight more than a single battle in quick succession, cause unless you're min-maxing for high CR, a single deployment already dips the Hyperion into yellow CR and malfunctions.

And 30 supplies is not irrelevant, unless you're only playing missions and not touching the campaign. Of course you can pay this, but when there are ships being able to do the same job more efficiently (and do NOT rely on a pile of specific skills to do that), it's just not worth it.

Yes, it's a hummer, but not in real life, it's a hummer in post-apocaliptic world there you can't care less about gasoline and parking spots.

Until you realize all gas stations are defunct and every drop of gasoline is now worth its weight in gold

It's an S and nothing you can do about it.

Oh, but of course I can - I can back up my claims with arguments from the previous post, which you failed to do much about, besides yelling and childish meme'ing, with a bit of argumentum ad hominem.

you are running your hyperions with SO and officers right? The fact that it needs skills to function isn't a very big deal since the chances you end up in the leadership path is already really high right now.

It is a big deal for those who do not or cannot take Leadership because they ran out of skill points.

I tried to use Hyperion, but without Leadership skills, it was not worth it because SO is needed for classic Hyperion use (of teleport spam and all guns blazing), but without the bonuses from Wolfpack Tactics it lacked PPT.  Also, non-SO Hyperion was a pain to use because it could not support three medium elite guns well (not enough dissipation, so the universal needs to be a missile, or the mounts undergunned) and ship needs to drop shields to get out (even with elite Helmsmanship) and take damage.

So yes, Hyperion is only good with specific skills.  If player does not or cannot get them, do not bother with Hyperion.  This is unlike previous releases when Hyperion was usable out-of-the-box.

Thank you. This exactly. I took points out of leadership during my current run, as I wanted to boost other ship builds, which require different skills. Saying "Hyperion is uber with Wolfpack Tactics" isn't saying much - there are a lot of ships in the game which can be made overpowered with specific skills.

Bottom line: Hyperion might even be great in specific circumstances, but if it requires a specific set of skills to be usable to begin with, then it should be reflected in its rank, which in this case would definitely be way lower than an S.

[intrinsic_parity]

Bottom line: Hyperion might even be great in specific circumstances, but if it requires a specific set of skills to be usable to begin with, then it should be reflected in its rank, which in this case would definitely be way lower than an S.

There are two ways of thinking about things here: considering maximum power of a ship when optimized, vs considering average power of a ship over a bunch of different conditions. Neither is necessarily wrong, they are just different ways of thinking about things.

I personally value the maximum power as a representation of a ships capability, particularly for ships with game breaking potential like instant TP. For instance phase ships are OP in part because of the skills, but I don't evaluate them based on not having the skills because if I'm bothering to use them, I'm definitely using the skills that make them as strong as possible.

IMO hyperion's peak power is very far above almost any other ship short of some moderately unbalanced or equally cheesy stuff like phase ships. Instant TP is just extremely powerful. I have had 0 issues with giving it to the AI too, it almost never dies because it has a get-out-of-jail-free card in the TP. The AI gets tons of production out of it reliably, enough to justify using it over multiple tempests or scarabs in a wolfpack fleet in my experience (based on combat statistics from the combat statistics mod like damage dealt and kills).

With regards to loadouts, I think most combinations of heavy needler, heavy machine gun, ion pulser, heavy blaster, and cryo blaster are very good with SO. 2x HB + HMG/needler/ion pulser is very good if you don't have omega guns, HB + CB + HMG/needler/ion pulser is much better once you get cryo blasters.

[Thaago]

An interesting consequence of the Hyperion costing 40% per deployment is that it costs very little supplies to start ticking down CR during a fight. Ticking a whole 40% only costs 15! For comparison ticking down 40% on a Lasher costs 16. So while the PPT with SO may be short, its actually very economical to just run the thing straight into malfunction territory. For this reason the most valuable hyperion skill is a skill that I get on every officer no matter what anyways: Reliability Engineering. The PPT increase may only be half as much, but the -25% to tickdown rate is huge, especially when combined with hardened subsystems.

I feel like with phase ships, they need a suite of skills to make them very powerful, while Hyperion just needs a good build.

[Megas]

An interesting consequence of the Hyperion costing 40% per deployment is that it costs very little supplies to start ticking down CR during a fight. Ticking a whole 40% only costs 15! For comparison ticking down 40% on a Lasher costs 16. So while the PPT with SO may be short, its actually very economical to just run the thing straight into malfunction territory. For this reason the most valuable hyperion skill is a skill that I get on every officer no matter what anyways: Reliability Engineering. The PPT increase may only be half as much, but the -25% to tickdown rate is huge, especially when combined with hardened subsystems.

I put Reliability Engineering on all of my officers (and my character for that matter), but for a different primary reason:  Guaranteed recovery without the need to shove Reinforced Bulkheads on the ship.  Runner up is +15% to max CR, which is good for everything, but really nice when piloting Ziggurat, and almost mandatory for Radiant.  The extra PPT and slower CR decay is nice too, I like them more than Damage Control's bonuses.

[Burvjradzite]

What cost are you talking right now? 15 DP? FITHTEEN DEPLOYMENT POINTS? Is this TOO much to handle?? A cost of a destroyer? Please do not mention 30 supplies, it's irrelevant in a battle and doesn't even much in a game economy. You can pay this even at the beginning of the game and feel no poverty.

Yes it is? Because for just one more DP, I can field two Tempests/Scarabs, which I can send to two opposite goals at the same time (which they will also get to quite fast) and will stay in battle for a lot longer. On top of that, 40 bloody CR per deployment. Hope you don't have to fight more than a single battle in quick succession, cause unless you're min-maxing for high CR, a single deployment already dips the Hyperion into yellow CR and malfunctions.

And 30 supplies is not irrelevant, unless you're only playing missions and not touching the campaign. Of course you can pay this, but when there are ships being able to do the same job more efficiently (and do NOT rely on a pile of specific skills to do that), it's just not worth it.

Look, I've provided screenshot, video and a meme to assure my dominance. And you still not inpressed, huh? Well, that just means we are in I'm right you're wrong situation.

I'm agree that scarab is stronger, but telling that you can field two Scarabs instead of one Hyperion is just fundamentally wrong and the reason why is officer cap. You cannot fill all dp with officered scarabs so it just needed to be implemented with higher dp ships.

So as I said, I'm right you're wrong.

[intrinsic_parity]

I feel like with phase ships, they need a suite of skills to make them very powerful, while Hyperion just needs a good build.

Oh, on the contrary, I feel like phase ships just need a specific officer, hyperion needs the player to take wolfpack tactics, so it's more of a constraint on the players build. To fly a phase ship personally, you do end up more restricted though, so in that sense, I agree.

[Megas]

Without skills, Doom is good and worth the 35 DP, just as deadly as last release.  With skills (specifically elite Helmsmanship, elite Phase Mastery, and Systems Expertise), Doom is too powerful.

Without skills, Harbinger is merely an easier-to-use AMB Afflictor that costs 20 DP instead of 8 DP.  With skills (same as Doom), it can brawl from near medium range with Phase Lances; basically a poor-man's Doom that cannot handle fighters.

However...
Ziggurat needs skills (elite Helmsmanship and Phase Mastery) just for QoL in using it.  Without skills, Ziggurat is slow as molasses and not fun to use.  It is like Hyperion in that way.

Also, unskilled fighters die to 30% rate after about a minute or so of fighting late game enemies, making them even more similar to missiles, but without the control and burst.  Thus, carriers need skills to be worth using, maybe.  Without skills, fighters are about as weak as they were in the 0.7 releases, and carriers are overshadowed by conventional warships, let alone phase ships.

[Hellya]

Without skills, Doom is good and worth the 35 DP, just as deadly as last release.  With skills (specifically elite Helmsmanship, elite Phase Mastery, and Systems Expertise), Doom is too powerful.

Without skills, Harbinger is merely an easier-to-use AMB Afflictor that costs 20 DP instead of 8 DP.  With skills (same as Doom), it can brawl from near medium range with Phase Lances; basically a poor-man's Doom that cannot handle fighters.

However...
Ziggurat needs skills (elite Helmsmanship and Phase Mastery) just for QoL in using it.  Without skills, Ziggurat is slow as molasses and not fun to use.  It is like Hyperion in that way.

Also, unskilled fighters die to 30% rate after about a minute or so of fighting late game enemies, making them even more similar to missiles, but without the control and burst.  Thus, carriers need skills to be worth using, maybe.  Without skills, fighters are about as weak as they were in the 0.7 releases, and carriers are overshadowed by conventional warships, let alone phase ships.

This has absolutely been my findings. Fighters are pretty meh and thus carriers, standard gun ships are mid row, and phase is doom stack material.

Phase ships without skills, especially the Doom, are far better than any carrier or hybrid per point. Even better than non carrier types without skills.

I am thinking the people who say the Doom is bad in AI hands have not field 3 or more at a time, and/or are fitting and skilling them poorly for AI. It is comical how fast the battle is over with perked phase ships. They are much more OP than fighters last patch by a large margin.

I would be shocked if phase ships were not brought back in line with the other ships at or before the next major patch. They are really all you need to kill any and everything no matter the size.

[Wapno]

Look, I've provided screenshot, video and a meme to assure my dominance. And you still not inpressed, huh? Well, that just means we are in I'm right you're wrong situation.

I'm agree that scarab is stronger, but telling that you can field two Scarabs instead of one Hyperion is just fundamentally wrong and the reason why is officer cap. You cannot fill all dp with officered scarabs so it just needed to be implemented with higher dp ships.

So as I said, I'm right you're wrong.

2 scarabs with one of them having an officer is still better bang for the buck in my opinion, so it being "fundamentally wrong" is just your view. Not every playthrough is a frigate swarm of 20 scarabs, you know.

Like you apparently, I also think you're consistently ignoring most of my arguments, so to that, I'll just quote you - I'm right you're wrong ^^

Also lmao, "assure my dominance". Sounds like you might have some complexes man.

An interesting consequence of the Hyperion costing 40% per deployment is that it costs very little supplies to start ticking down CR during a fight. Ticking a whole 40% only costs 15! For comparison ticking down 40% on a Lasher costs 16. So while the PPT with SO may be short, its actually very economical to just run the thing straight into malfunction territory. For this reason the most valuable hyperion skill is a skill that I get on every officer no matter what anyways: Reliability Engineering. The PPT increase may only be half as much, but the -25% to tickdown rate is huge, especially when combined with hardened subsystems.

I feel like with phase ships, they need a suite of skills to make them very powerful, while Hyperion just needs a good build.

Yup, interesting point. Although I believe it has to be taken into account that Lasher's CR is going to start decaying later, meaning an overall supply cost per time spent in battle might still be in its favor versus Hyperion. Still, I'm more concerned about the volatility of using Hyperion in a state where it risks malfunctions, considering how brittle it is without the shield (have an engine flame out while your teleporter is still on cooldown, and you're risking taking an alpha strike that will kill you).

I still hold that this ship absolutely needs certain skills to be in a usable condition, and is just not worth the price tag without them.

Without skills, Doom is good and worth the 35 DP, just as deadly as last release.  With skills (specifically elite Helmsmanship, elite Phase Mastery, and Systems Expertise), Doom is too powerful.

Without skills, Harbinger is merely an easier-to-use AMB Afflictor that costs 20 DP instead of 8 DP.  With skills (same as Doom), it can brawl from near medium range with Phase Lances; basically a poor-man's Doom that cannot handle fighters.

However...
Ziggurat needs skills (elite Helmsmanship and Phase Mastery) just for QoL in using it.  Without skills, Ziggurat is slow as molasses and not fun to use.  It is like Hyperion in that way.

Also, unskilled fighters die to 30% rate after about a minute or so of fighting late game enemies, making them even more similar to missiles, but without the control and burst.  Thus, carriers need skills to be worth using, maybe.  Without skills, fighters are about as weak as they were in the 0.7 releases, and carriers are overshadowed by conventional warships, let alone phase ships.

Honestly, skills in the current version make the Doom even more OP than it ever was against fighters and carriers. As if "press F to delete all fighters now" wasn't bad enough, there are now skills with significant boost to phase ships, where as carriers not only rely on their skills to function (where as phase ships are still usable and deadly without them), but their boosts are somewhat weak compared to those of phase ships.

You might as well not even field any carriers now if there's a Doom in the opposing fleet, unless you're minmaxed against it.

[Megas]

Honestly, skills in the current version make the Doom even more OP than it ever was against fighters and carriers. As if "press F to delete all fighters now" wasn't bad enough, there are now skills with significant boost to phase ships, where as carriers not only rely on their skills to function (where as phase ships are still usable and deadly without them), but their boosts are somewhat weak compared to those of phase ships.

You might as well not even field any carriers now if there's a Doom in the opposing fleet, unless you're minmaxed against it.

Without skills, player might as well not field any carriers against any serious late-game fight because the fighters will get mulched by the enemy fleet of whatever in about a minute.  Stuck at 30% rate might as well be out of ammo.  Expanded Deck Crew is mandatory, but with its weak bonuses, it alone is not enough to save unskilled fighters, and carriers get replaced by conventional warships or phase ships in my fleet.

As for Doom mining fighters, since fighters are effectively missiles and vice-versa, I have no problems with mines spawning directly on top of them for the instant kill.  As far as I am concerned, mines are effectively anti-missile for that use.

If I want "fighters" late in the game, I grab Conquest or cruiser with large missile mount and mount Locusts and Expanded Missile Racks (and try to get an officer with Missile Spec. if possible).  Does the much of the job fighters can do, except the Locusts last a few more minutes, and the "mothership" is still a fully-armed warship with ITU that can pound the enemy with gunfire, not a civilian freighter equivalent that spent all OP on fighters, Expanded Deck Crew, various hullmods, and few token flak or beam PD if any.  Even the modern Doom (especially with Systems Expertise) with mine spam and possibly some Salamanders plays more like the carriers did from before 0.8a than modern carriers.

Changing from fighters-as-ships to fighters-as-missiles has caused worse problems than those it fixed.

[Wapno]

As for Doom mining fighters, since fighters are effectively missiles and vice-versa, I have no problems with mines spawning directly on top of them for the instant kill.  As far as I am concerned, mines are effectively anti-missile for that use.

I think the whole mindset of "fighters = missiles" is heavily oversimplifying that aspect of the game, but regardless, I hold that Doom, or any ship for that matter, should not be a direct hard counter to all carriers like it is now.

Non-hybrid carriers nearly completely rely on their fighters for firepower, and mine spam shuts it down at pretty much zero cost to Doom, rendering the carriers useless (especially at 30% replacement rate). Notice that there isn't any other interaction like that between ships within the entire game. Imagine if there was something that could easily and permanently shut down warships and their weapons.

Maybe the closest things currently in existence to that are the Harbinger (which can turn off a warship, but only for a fraction of a second), Ziggy (which is a unique end-game ship, and comes with its own host of issues), and Shade/Omen with their ion emitter (which gets stopped by shield and isn't permanent anyway).

Furthermore, besides carriers, there are no other ships so heavily affected by perfect PD (except maybe the gimmick ship Gryphon, which is still a fully capable warship with multiple ballistic mounts at the front).

The current situation is simple and totally binary. If I see carriers in enemy fleet: field my Doom and never worry about any bombers in the entire fight. If I see Doom in the enemy fleet: DO NOT field any of my carriers - they'll get shut down easily.

Doom represents a nearly perfect, nearly zero cost PD, therefore it's overpowered.

Changing from fighters-as-ships to fighters-as-missiles has caused worse problems than those it fixed.

I disagree. Before the fighters-as-weapons change, there was practically zero point to piloting carriers, which were nothing but anemic watered-down warships acting as a repair point for drones which you don't even have any direct control over. I can say with 100% certainty that back then I never even bothered with carriers or fighters. They were just boring.

IIRC according to one of Alex's old blog posts, the change was supposed to give player a fun interaction with fighters and incentivize piloting carriers, which in my opinion it achieved without a doubt. I can't argue with you that the solution isn't without issues, but there is no legitimate reason to claim that it is worse than the previous system, which frankly was just horrible.

[Megas]

I disagree. Before the fighters-as-weapons change, there was practically zero point to piloting carriers, which were nothing but anemic watered-down warships acting as a repair point for drones which you don't even have any direct control over. I can say with 100% certainty that back then I never even bothered with carriers or fighters. They were just boring.

Carriers were fine until 0.7a, when officers were added, then warships with skilled officers were so much stronger than fighters that carriers had no point.  Fighters could be commanded like ships, and even deployed without any carriers on the field.

Now, in 0.95, we are back to where we were in 0.7a in terms of carrier and fighter power, with some carrier skills in Leadership, and those in other trees that directly compete with other more useful general skills.  It is quite possible player cannot get carrier skills without sacrificing more important skills, and unskilled fighters this release are about as weak in 0.7a, with an inferior carrier-and-fighters system.

IIRC according to one of Alex's old blog posts, the change was supposed to give player a fun interaction with fighters and incentivize piloting carriers, which in my opinion it achieved without a doubt.

Alex failed miserably, except maybe the first 0.8a release with overpowered Talons cost 0 OP and with only Expanded Deck Crew (another post-0.8a abomination) sucking OP out of the carriers.  (Of course, that had double burst PD Sparks and killer 3x3 Warthogs too...)  Disappointing too, since the new system seemed very promising on paper, and the problems only became apparent after I played with the fighters that were not overpowered and/or (after the Talon nerf) after I sacrificed all weapons and sent strong fighters at enemies and noticed they were more effective than a carrier with guns and weaker fighters.  If I pilot a dedicated carrier today, all I can do is run away from everything, which is boring.  Piloting a carrier with enough guns to defend itself or bully smaller ships in a brawl is more fun that running away from everything, which along with superior fighter control are why I consider pre-0.8a carriers/fighters superior to what we have today.

The biggest problems with carrier-and-fighters since 0.8a are fighters and Expanded Deck Crew sucking all OP out of the carrier just to do its job (of using fighters), and fighters cannot be commanded.  Instead of carriers being watered down warships, they are now dedicated freighters that haul fighters instead of cargo or fuel.  I rather have watered-down warship with superior control of fighters instead of an unarmed or minimally armed freighter in combat with very limited control of fighters - so limited that fighters feel more like missiles than fighters (there is a reason why I stand by fighters are missiles).  The latter can be tolerated if fighters are strong, but today, fighters are almost Pilums v2.

As for Gryphon, with its stats, I consider it a carrier pretending to be a warship.  Before 0.95, I would consider it worse than a carrier in every way, always rushing to the front line to die when it should be avoiding enemies and lobbing missiles from long range.  Today, with carriers being bad, I am not sure which is worse.  At least Gryphon can kill things with its large missile.  Although now that we have Champion, Gryphon does not serve much of a purpose anymore.  Gryphon is too fragile to brawl with Hammers and other weapons, and if I want a homing missile platform, I rather bring Apogee instead of Gryphon.

Non-hybrid carriers nearly completely rely on their fighters for firepower, and mine spam shuts it down at pretty much zero cost to Doom, rendering the carriers useless (especially at 30% replacement rate). Notice that there isn't any other interaction like that between ships within the entire game. Imagine if there was something that could easily and permanently shut down warships and their weapons.

This would have been less of a problem for carriers before 0.8a, when they could have enough OP to support a viable weapons package (and with much better control of their fighters).  They would be like Legion today (which barely has enough OP for few main guns plus ITU).  Heron back during 0.65 would have been super Wolf with fighters, probably close to modern Fury except with fighters instead of Plasma Burn.  (And Venture, back when it was good, would have been like a Mora/Vigilance hybrid.)  Of course, if full warship has a problem, a semi-warship carrier might have it too.

Before 0.8, fighters cost either Logistics or fleet slots instead of the carriers' OP.  Because of that, along with absence of Expanded Deck Crew, carriers had the OP to arm and defend themselves (or chase and bully ships smaller than them).