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[robepriority]

Ziggurat for station busting? That's a role?

I thought it was for countering omega weapon burst.

[Megas]

Sure, but there is a difference between hyper-optimizing against them to maximize story point gain vs. finding something that works well enough to farm some AI cores. I was able to beat them cleanly 1 or 2 at a time, and didn't feel the need to optimize any further. Hyperion was good enough to be in that fleet. That's all I'm saying.

I tried the same myself (of comfortably killing Ordos with Radiants for cores), but without complete success.  Radiant and phase fleet did not work well enough against strong Ordos if I deployed them as a fleet.  Best case, my fleet kills one Ordos (out of several nearby), but then Radiant and Ziggurat are in the red or yellow and I need to wait days to get out of the yellow, and I have only my fleet of Dooms left for the next several Ordos breathing down my fleet's neck.  Worst case, too many ships die (because enemy Radiants are overpowered and AI cannot cheese with phase ships like player can).  With the Doom fleet, I resorted to a chain of Doom flagships fighting solo to minimize costs and casualties (similar to killing classic Hegemony System Defense Fleet with 25 DP worth of chained frigate flagships in 0.6 releases for no Leadership builds.)

I cannot try +500% cheese fleets when I have Industry 5.  Industry is the campaign QoL tree, not max power combat tree.  Industry 5 meant no Leadership 5 or Technology 10.  With Combat 5 and Technology 10, I could solo fleets like SCC could.  Or with Combat/Leadership/Tech 5/5/5, I could attempt Hyperion or Fury spam.

Also, I bring about five Phantoms to drive-by raid targets of opportunity for free stuff.  That would probably mess up bonus xp and some skills.

Ziggurat for station busting? That's a role?

Is Ziggurat any good against stations?  When I try to send motes to a station module, it almost always targets its center (instead of the module I tried to target) instead and the motes get wasted.  Makes it too hard to zap modules and Ziggurat is almost a sitting duck against the battlestation.

[Megas]

Sure, but there is a difference between hyper-optimizing against them to maximize story point gain vs. finding something that works well enough to farm some AI cores. I was able to beat them cleanly 1 or 2 at a time, and didn't feel the need to optimize any further. Hyperion was good enough to be in that fleet. That's all I'm saying.

One more thing.  I tried a fleet similar to what I used in 0.9.1, with capitals and carriers (and mostly capital spam), but they got wiped.  They could kill human fleets without much problem, but hit a wall as soon as they met top Ordos fleets (unlike in 0.9.1).  Ordos with Radiants are such a huge spike compared to 0.9.1.

If I want to farm cores, the only fleet that matters is one that can kill Ordos fleets without losing too many ships, and a fleet that can do that will destroy everything else the game throws at the player.  I am not even trying to optimize for +500%, just one that can get those shiny alpha cores so I can attempt full sector conquest if I want to do that.

[Vanshilar]

I don't think raw damage dealt and damage taken statistics are really a good representation of effectiveness for a number of reasons:

Damage dealt

Eh since this is a combat game, I'm not sure why you would feel that damage dealt/taken are not a good representation of a ship's effectiveness. That's basically the point of combat, kill the enemy before they kill you, and damage is how the kills are made. Granted there are other roles a ship might have (for example, as I mentioned, the Fury having Xyphos is also providing PD, anti-fighter, and incapacitation abilities, which aren't directly represented in combat statistics), but the Hyperion isn't really doing any of them here.

If a ship is spending its time doing vent cycles in a brawl, it may end up doing more damage per ship killed (because it does more shield/armor damage), but it's not going to be doing more damage per unit time than another ship that's smashing through the enemy fleet -- that is, the rate of doing damage, which is effectively what the combat statistics measure. This is why I'm doing a direct comparison of the Fury and the Hyperion in the same battle -- they're effectively competing against each other for who can do damage the fastest. If a ship is at an effective stalemate with another ship, firing some shots, then backing off to vent, repeat, etc., then it's spending time at high (hard) flux and not firing until it backs off far enough away that it can vent, then coming back to go again. That's very inefficient on time, on a damage per second basis per cycle. Another ship that can go in and kill its target will be able to move on to another target and keep firing. So killing things faster leads to more damage dealt, not less.

Now if I used a fleet full of ship A against the test fleet, and then used a fleet full of ship B against the same test fleet, and we look at the topline number ("X total damage delivered"), then you'd be right -- in that case, any damage beyond what was needed to kill the test fleet is basically inefficient (since the test fleet has the same amount of hull in both cases), and the lower that topline number, the better. But that's not how the setup is done here.

Yes the way to actually "kill" a ship is via its hull; you can bypass shields (which is why I prefer to pilot the Doom), and you can minimize hitting armor if you keep striking at the same spot (to keep hitting hull so you're not wasting your shots on armor). However, on a hull damage basis, the Hyperion was even worse; the Furies did 118,393 hull damage, while the Hyperions did 69,325 hull damage, so the Furies actually did 71% more hull damage than the Hyperions. 33% of the Furies' damage went toward enemy hull, whereas 28% of the Hyperions' damage did, so the Hyperions were actually less efficient at killing than the Furies. Looking at the overall damage rather than hull damage actually inflated the Hyperions' damage results.

Since you used cryoblaster/heavy blaster/ion pulser, I tried that instead (SO, extended/hardened/solar/stabilized shields, hardened subsystems, reckless officer with TA, SE, RE, SM, elite EWM). In theory it should do more hull damage than the Fury because the Fury is using cryoblaster, 2 sabot pods, minipulser, IR pulse laser, and Xyphos, so the only thing that is anti-hull is the cryoblaster, whereas the Hyperion also has heavy blaster. However, the results were still that the Fury did 50% more hull damage than the Hyperion (117,597 to 78,230), as well as 51% more overall damage (334,366 to 222,152). So the Hyperion improved, but not much.

Damage absorbed

Regarding damage absorbed, it's essentially a proxy for measuring how well a ship can tank and its combat persistence, i.e. ability to hold territory before it needs to back off. Granted a smaller ship can maneuver tank or kite where the potential damage wouldn't be recorded, but in this case the Fury is using Xyphos which directly disables enemy weapons -- and that's not recorded either. But it leads to an observation about how the two ships fight: The Hyperion tends to teleport in, shoot its load, and then teleport out at the first sign of trouble. By contrast, the Fury stays in and actually finishes the fight while absorbing hits to its shield. In doing so, the Fury actually makes use of the opening where a ship is vulnerable to make sure the ship doesn't get away. The Hyperion usually teleports away even at low flux (i.e. when it isn't in any danger), which is an AI issue rather than a fundamental ship issue, but we all have to deal with the game's AI unless we're soloing. Hence, the Fury spends more of its time actually doing damage, thus the higher damage numbers, while the Hyperion more often lets the target get away, allowing the target to regen its flux in safety.

Which leads to another issue. The Fury absorbed hits primarily to its shield. The Hyperion tended to teleport in the middle of being attacked, which means its shields temporarily dropped and it took damage during the teleportation sequence. Thus in the previous fight, the Furies combined took a total of 2787 armor damage and 330 hull damage, while the Hyperions took a total of 3033 armor damage and 2852 hull damage (including the one which died who took 1442 hull damage). In the attached fight, the Furies took 932 armor damage and 188 hull damage, while the Hyperions took 1811 armor damage and 448 hull damage. So the Furies absorbed damage using its flux, which regenerates, while the Hyperions took relatively more damage to armor and hull, which is permanent. That's bad.

2-Ordos test fleets as benchmark

You can use whatever test you want to compare ships, but generally speaking benchmarks for comparisons are done using a fairly difficult problem. Nobody cares about how fast the latest CPU opens notepad.exe for example, it's simply too trivial a task to act as a good differentiator between different CPU's.

Ordos fleets are high-end and thus fleets that can defeat them effectively can also generally defeat any other fleet, excepting certain unique fights (whose results wouldn't apply toward fighting other fleets anyway, due to their unique mechanics). Thus they work well as a way to differentiate between good loadouts and bad loadouts, good fleet compositions and bad fleet compositions, etc. It's easy for a fleet that can defeat a high-end fleet to "punch down" to something easier, but more difficult to tell if a fleet that can defeat a low-end fleet can "punch up" to something more difficult. Hence the results are relevant even when fighting easier fleets such as faction fleets, even if a player doesn't bother farming Ordos fleets.

Nor did I ever bother to actually optimize the Fury loadout. There are simply too many possibilities to try. Sure I think I've settled on Fury/Xyphos/sabot, but is it actually best to put all remaining 14 points into capacity (which is what I did) as opposed to putting some into vent? I don't know. I took front shields, is it actually better to just keep the original omni shields so I can put the points toward something else (or, freeing up the OP needed to have one less s-mod so I can take Automated Ships for a Radiant)? I don't know. So there's not even any guarantees that the Fury loadout is the best it could possibly have been either.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[intrinsic_parity]

I should say, raw damage statistics are nowhere near a complete picture of effectiveness. They are not useless, but do not give the whole picture. I'm merely trying to point out the ways that those numbers can fail to reflect underlying effectiveness, or ways they can overrepresent certain aspects of ships that aren't necessarily that valuable.

Granted there are other roles a ship might have...but the Hyperion isn't really doing any of them here.

I would argue hyperion has a ton of value purely in it's tendency to end up behind the enemy and not die while doing that, causing them to turn around and expose their vulnerable engines to the rest of the fleet. It also causes enemy ships to spend lots of time pointing in useless directions (not shooting or shooting ineffectively) as they try to turn and chase it. Even if it did no damage, it would be worth quite a bit IMO. For me, that's half the value of the (AI) hyperion. IMO, hyperion does not need to do as much damage/DP as other ships to be worthwhile. I also value its ability to instantly capture control points on the enemy side of the battlefield giving extra DP at the start of battles (very significant against remnants), and it's ability to efficiently hunt and kill small ships that would otherwise be a major distraction for the rest of the fleet. Usually my hyperion kills 2-3 frigates before any of my other ships have fired a shot, although perhaps only 1-2 remnant frigates. That leaves my core ships (like furies) free to deal damage to the big slow ships without worrying about flanks or getting distracted.

Edit: my Hyperion also has an ion pulser to match the zyphos ion damage for whatever that is worth.

r.e. dmg/sec
It doesn't matter at all unless CR/PPT is a major factor costing you supplies. A strategy that kills everything in 20 seconds is not worse than a strategy that kills everything in 10 seconds.

The fastest you can kill something is to overload it once, break the armor in one location, and chew through all the hull. That's the minimum damage you can do while winning. Any additional damage you do beyond that is wasted/inefficient. Of course you will never achieve that, but you also shouldn't laude that wasted damage as somehow representing increased effectiveness. It didn't achieve anything, it was an inefficiency.

Since you used cryoblaster/heavy blaster/ion pulser, I tried that instead (SO, extended/hardened/solar/stabilized shields, hardened subsystems, reckless officer with TA, SE, RE, SM, elite EWM). In theory it should do more hull damage than the Fury because the Fury is using cryoblaster, 2 sabot pods, minipulser, IR pulse laser, and Xyphos, so the only thing that is anti-hull is the cryoblaster, whereas the Hyperion also has heavy blaster. However, the results were still that the Fury did 50% more hull damage than the Hyperion (117,597 to 78,230), as well as 51% more overall damage (334,366 to 222,152). So the Hyperion improved, but not much.

Your fury is very heavy on efficient/anti-shield damage (double sabot, minipulser, ir pulse lasers), so it is not surprising at all that it is more effective against remnants that heavily incentivize shield damage with their super efficient shields. Also, in my previous comments, I clearly agreed with you that fury is better because it is currently overpowered. In fact, if you adjust the fury to 22 DP like I suggested, the hull damage/DP is almost identical to the hyperion in your test LOL. Not to mention all the other value the hyperion has that I mentioned earlier.


r.e. damage taken
Once again, I'm not trying to prove that hyperions are superior, just trying to point out the ways that the numbers you are citing don't actually fully represent the effectiveness of ships. I think if you could somehow add up all the damage that was either fired at the hyperion and missed, or not fired at all because the ship was distracted by the hyperion, it would be a very large number, perhaps larger than the furies total damage tanked.

I agree that the AI's tendency to take unnecessary hull/armor damage with hyperion is a significant downside.


r.e. the 2-Ordos test fleets as benchmark
I don't think a computer benchmark test is a fair comparison. At the end of the day, every computational task boils down to a bunch of basic operations/computations that need to be executed, and processors are measured by the number of computations per second they can do. On the other hand, different fights in starsector reward different types of damage, and different strategies unequally, so being able to deal damage quickly/efficiently in one fight doesn't necessarily translate perfectly to another.

Remnants heavily reward anti-shield capabilities, and also radiants in particular tend to punish frigates pretty hard with their ability to instantly turn and chase with TP. Both of these things are in favor of the fury in this fight, but not necessarily in other fights. In another end-game type fight like a 10x legion/onslaught bounty, anti-armor damage and flanking are potentially more valuable. Of course furies will do fine in those fights, but perhaps they will be less efficient per supply. Every fight is a different fight that you could optimize for.

IMO, any strategy that can beat all of the challenges in the game is pretty much indistinguishable from the others. Even differences in supply cost or money are pretty much irrelevant by the end of the game.

[Maethendias]

tier lists about capitals especially do not make sense, since all capital ships are hyper specialized, and VERY seldom share a similar role, take frontline brawling for example:

people would think "hey paragon is tanky, thats a good frontline for my fleet, an ANCHOR", but it isnt. despite the paragon being able to eat alot of fire thanks to its shields, it doesnt actually want to do that... it also dies very quickly when fighting multiple foes at once... no the paragon is actually a sniper, an artillery plattform best utilized against capital heavy fleets or stations (and even then dont pull an icarus) meanwhile, the acutal tank of the capital arsenal, the onslaught, REALLY doesnt want to fight the range game...  instead it is very happy going brawling as your frontline and 1 v 1 ing targets up close and personal.

the same thing happens for the carriers, astral is a pure hangar plattform, and everything usefull about it has been thrown out to make it as good of a hangar plattform as it could possibly be.. then you list the legion. the legion is not a mainstay carrier, the legion is a command ship. VERY durable, VERY manouverable and more importantly, its a generalist in the purest sense... and yes, it DOESNT want to use bombers, because its not a ship to be using bombers on... its an anchor... and the job of a fleet anchor is to bind the majority of the enemies attention to itself while being durable and flexible enough to deal with most situations. this means, shield damage, escort ships, and interceptors. you said it yourself, its fighters take alot of losses by virtue of the legion always going "in".... thats why you use fighters that have a very short replacement time (xyphon fighters are amazing here btw, in addition to all other positives, especially concerning the role of the legion, they give you a "semi" shield when you vent with your legion... making it indirectly even tankier) the legion is not a carrier, its a battle carrier

conquest and oddissey are the only exceptions in the capital roster, and even then the conquest is more of a brawler and the oddissey is more of a sniper thanks to the diffrences in ballistics to energy weapons and hardpoint coverage overall.

ironically, while you were praising the backline appeal of the astral, kind of forgotten that about the atlas 2... yes i agree, it can be a very effective weapon, but imo it isnt a capital, more of an oversized cruiser.. indeed a very strong missile plattform... for aformentioned reasons it doesnt acutally want to USE its ballistics for anything but pd... trust me, fighters and missiles are its DEATH... it is a PURE missile plattform, however, it fills this role exceptionally well (arguably better than the gryphon), slot in some missile racks, give it a missile spec officer, and just watch it spam 2 large missile slots like no ones business. VERY potent if you build around it.

i also dont think remnants as a whole or story exclusive ships should appear in any tierlist anyways... especially remnants who are purposefully overtuned


so ye... tier lists kind of dont make sense for capital ships, there are too few of them, and they all serve completly diffrent purposes



2 notes on the side, the aurora is a SO ship, slot projectile energy weapons into it, and use it as a cruiser sized wolf (same with shrikes btw), both can also make exceptional use of mining blasters (i recommend a mix of a few ion cannons, lots of pulse lasers and mining blasters /lances in this order, again, SO is key for these ships)

also, omen, its not a point defence ship by any  means, despite it being able to shoot down fighters and missiles, its acutally a flanking ship disabler. if it gets its hands on a ship without shields its system can quickly fry all its systems and weapons, leaving it helpless... does also considerable armor damage to light-midsized targets, and is quite the shield tanker

[Amazigh]

the conquest is more of a brawler and the oddissey is more of a sniper

I'm sorry but what.

Conquest is a sniper, with 2x Gauss and 2x Hurricane you can outrange near enough everything, and have the speed to keep your distance.
It has atrocious shields, and is very squishy once the shield goes down, so brawling is not a good idea at all.

Odyssey is a flanker, with 2x Plasma, 3x Sabot Pod and Hurricane you have monstrous close range damage, and mobility on par with some cruisers, allowing you to flank around and annihilate more or less anything smaller than you very quickly.
While beams have long range and Advanced Optics to boost that even further, they are not a good option for sniper builds, as soft flux damage means they are only really useful when massed to ridiculous levels or when used against ships much smaller than you.

Even if you got the names the wrong way around, the Odyssey can't really work as a brawler. Its shield is only moderately efficient and it has paper thin armour, so it dies very quickly in close range frontal engagements against similarly sized vessels.

[Megas]

Both Conquest and Odyssey can be built to brawl.  Odyssey with two plasma cannons can outgun just about anything in a duel.  They both need either Hardened Shields or maximum caps to shield tank adequately.  Conquest also needs appropriate AI (Steady for 800-900 range weapons, Aggressive for Storm Needlers) if not piloted by player.  Odyssey with double plasma does not work well with AI and needs player control.

[Maethendias]

the conquest is more of a brawler and the oddissey is more of a sniper

I'm sorry but what.

Conquest is a sniper, with 2x Gauss and 2x Hurricane you can outrange near enough everything, and have the speed to keep your distance.
It has atrocious shields, and is very squishy once the shield goes down, so brawling is not a good idea at all.

Odyssey is a flanker, with 2x Plasma, 3x Sabot Pod and Hurricane you have monstrous close range damage, and mobility on par with some cruisers, allowing you to flank around and annihilate more or less anything smaller than you very quickly.
While beams have long range and Advanced Optics to boost that even further, they are not a good option for sniper builds, as soft flux damage means they are only really useful when massed to ridiculous levels or when used against ships much smaller than you.

Even if you got the names the wrong way around, the Odyssey can't really work as a brawler. Its shield is only moderately efficient and it has paper thin armour, so it dies very quickly in close range frontal engagements against similarly sized vessels.

despitebeing able to do that.... uhm, gauss cannons on their own arent acutally that usefull..., and neither are long rage hurricanes.. thats what i mean, long range ballistics usually isnt a good idea, ye the shield damage is there, but there is a lack of follow through, ships can easily just vent through gauss cannons and tank 1 or 2 hits... with a conquest you are alot better off skirmishing mid range with dps ballistics... because THEN hurricanes acutally dont miss anymore, like as many issues the ai has... you cant just throw hurricanes from across the sector at it and expect results

again, coming back to the odyssey, you dont want it to acutally get too close to enemies... you want to skirmish with it to a position where it can use tachyons as a flanker or from the back of the enemy.... you know, when beams acutally become usefull? since most ships dont have omni shields

you can make ANYTHING work in starsector, thats not the point... my point was, capitals were mainly built to fill a specific role, instead of all being just "flag ships"
ALSO, like i said.... conquest and odyssey blur the line anyways... so i dont understand why you are making that point again

[Amazigh]

despitebeing able to do that.... uhm, gauss cannons on their own arent acutally that usefull..., and neither are long rage hurricanes..

If you were just deploying the conquest solo then sure, enemies can just vent away the worst of the flux, but you deploy it as part of a fleet where the long range kinetic pressure lets other ships do work.
And personally i've found hurricanes (with or without ECCM) to be sufficiently accurate enough at gauss range to be worth using.

In general re: my suggested conquest build, it's what i've found to be a build that is super AI-friendly, which is generally what you want to go for with capitals, as they are typically less fun to pilot personally than smaller ships.
Any closer range build for the conquest requires specific officer personalities to avoid having the ship *** up and die, because it has bad armour and bad shields.

They both need either Hardened Shields or maximum caps to shield tank adequately.

I'd say by doing this you're to quote to phrase: "Polishing a turd"
Conquest in particular, as the shields on it are so bad that even with HS (which is gonna be nerfed in 0.95a1 making this strat even less viable) its shield is inefficient enough to not really be something you want to "tank" with imo.

[Megas]

I'd say by doing this you're to quote to phrase: "Polishing a turd"
Conquest in particular, as the shields on it are so bad that even with HS (which is gonna be nerfed in 0.95a1 making this strat even less viable) its shield is inefficient enough to not really be something you want to "tank" with imo.

No, it is "making its defense good enough so that it wins the flux war instead of losing it" and/or "turning it from a battlecruiser to a fast battleship" by being able to absorb some hits while it blows the crap out of the enemy with overwhelming firepower.  Basically, outgun the enemy first, and Conquest has the flux stats to do it, even with mediocre shields.

Yes, Hardened Shields will be weakened, though it will be cheaper so player can put the remaining OP into caps.  Of course, it will probably be a net loss.  +30 caps can do the job of Hardened Shields, although it is not as good because it effectively slows venting.  Still, 30 caps is the only option if player has not found Hardened Shields before obtaining Conquest, and it gets the job done.

[intrinsic_parity]

Gauss cannons are actually quite decent against hull armor. 700 damage kinetic hits means 350 hit strength for armor calcs making it slightly worse than a mauler. Not super efficient but it will do good damage. The AI is good at sniping though so it's more of a player build.

I would also the odyssey is quite bad at sniping. The only reasonable long range option it has is the tac lance, but it has no ability to deal hard flux damage to set those up. 2x plasma odyssey (or plasma + auto pulse for the AI) is much much better than tac lance odyssey IMO.

[Igncom1]

I always go for a duel autopulse, or autopulse and t lance for my odysseys. But I mostly rely on the AI.

[TaLaR]

They both need either Hardened Shields or maximum caps to shield tank adequately.

I'd say by doing this you're to quote to phrase: "Polishing a turd"
Conquest in particular, as the shields on it are so bad that even with HS (which is gonna be nerfed in 0.95a1 making this strat even less viable) its shield is inefficient enough to not really be something you want to "tank" with imo.

It's not like Conquest can armor-tank. Base armor seems decent, but gun layout makes you vulnerable anyway (unlike Onslaught which has most guns too deep within the ship to disable).

You are at least withing TL/HIL and enemy Gauss range while using Gauss, so you have to be able to tank that (at least no worse than the enemy Conquest in Gauss case).

Plus you'd want to approach closer to use Heavy Maulers as well after enemy is already at high flux.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

you can make ANYTHING work in starsector, thats not the point... my point was, capitals were mainly built to fill a specific role, instead of all being just "flag ships"

Save you "flag ship" for super-capital class...!