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[Flying Birdy]

Curious as to what everyone's thoughts are of whether to run one or two radiants in their fleet.

With all the available CR buffs for AI ships and the combat endurance skill, player fleets can field either two radiants (with a gamma core in each) or one radiant (with an alpha core). Obviously, there is a tradeoff here between quantity and quality - but does the extra +4 skill really make up the difference of having another radiant in a player fleet? I've been playing around with missile-heavy radiant builds and I'm personally leaning towards having two radiants with gammas. However, that just might be because missile builds benefit a lot from hitting a critical mass of missile spam with lots of missile boats.

What does everyone else think?

[Amoebka]

With the new elite Systems Expertise and the 50% faster repairs skill, you can easily go below malfunction threshold and still steamroll. Alternatively, Hull Restoration is another +10% CR, allowing you to have two beta Radiants at 43%.

[Yunru]

12 Gamma Core Glimmers.

[intrinsic_parity]

If you are using the neural link skill and hullmod, one of the radiants does not need a core I believe since it benefits from your skills, so you might be able to get two radiants including one with an alpha core.

[Hiruma Kai]

If you are using the neural link skill and hullmod, one of the radiants does not need a core I believe since it benefits from your skills, so you might be able to get two radiants including one with an alpha core.

The problem with Neural link is you're not considered sitting in the Radiant except in combat.  So no +15% CR boost from Combat Endurance on your character.  So 2nd Radiant Alpha core is a not really doable unless you're willing to accept a 25% CR neural linked Radiant.  If you want 40% or above CR on the neural linked radiant (and assuming you grabbed crew training) you're basically limited to the neural linked radiant and a gamma core (120/180 = 0.66 -> -34%).  70-34+15 = 51% CR. 

On the other hand, an integrated gamma core Radiant isn't a bad ship (4 elite skills, and you technically don't need combat endurance as going from 51 to 66 doesn't do much and the peak performance time is more than enough as is).

[intrinsic_parity]

I was going to try the neural link stuff in my campaign, but my plan was to just do the one radiant and then spam remnant frigates for ECM. I might mess around with double radiant too, gamma core radiant seems like it would be good enough anyway.

[Histidine]

User Dream on Discord came up with a cursed Radiant blob configuration: up to eight unofficered Radiants.



Support Doctrine makes them effectively lightly officered, including Damage Control, which combined with Automated Repair Unit keeps non-major malfunctions of low relevance. Crew Training adds a little bit of CR too. It occurs to me that with Hull Restoration's up to 15% bonus CR from S-mods you could squeeze even more performance into this.

[Amoebka]

Wait a second, what happens if you deploy a ship that's over its max CR? Does it retain the current CR, or immediately drop down to max?