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[DirectionsToL3Please]

Paragon-class Escort Battleship.  I'm not running any mods at all, so whatever it is, it's vanilla.

[Thaago]

That is not going to perform well at all because the weapon groups are really really screwed up!!! At least hit the auto group distributor button, but this is effectively crippled!

Beyond that... yes that is a very bad loadout (sorry!). High Scatter Amplifier is going to cripple the tachyon lance ranges, as will unstable injector, and efficiency overhaul is campaign QOL at the cost of OP (kind of like a self imposed D mod when it comes to combat). As is high resolution sensors. The choice of rocket pods in the universals is not awful except that these are the only slots on the ship that can have kinetic damage type guns, so are almost always best with them. This goes against the usual advise of putting missiles on whenever possible, but its important in terms of getting remnants shields down! Heavy Needlers work well as do High velocity drivers. But that also makes the expanded missile racks also a waste (which on a capital, 2 meds + 4 smalls is already pretty borderline for that hullmod).

Paragons also benefit a lot from Stabilized Shields, which is near mandatory in terms of flux savings.

Was this an autofit loadout? If so... ouch. It also somehow horribly messed up the weapon groups - bad enough I'd actually file a bug report about it if that wasn't you or if hitting the auto weapon group button doesn't fit it!

[Hatter]

I'm so confused, what ship is this even? I have no idea what vanilla capital has 2 large energies, 2 medium missiles, bunch of medium and small energies along with some small missiles.

Paragon. The universal slots can theoretically be used for something other than heavy needlers / HVD.

Edit: Oh no missed the second page. Whoops.

Edit 2: Paragon's greatest asset is it's range from the built in Advanced Targeting Core. They don't have to pursue the enemy because they can outrange just about anything. Giving HSB and Unstable Injector takes away that range advantage while not giving the paragon enough speed to actually catch anything.

[DirectionsToL3Please]

Yeah, the loadout groups were automatic.  I never adjusted them, just went with whatever the game set up once I added in the weapons.

Because it's a short-range brawler, I didn't worry too much about shield killing; by the time anything gets close to the Paragon, the other ships in the fleet have stripped shields.  I very much built the fleet to work as a group, which is sort of what this thread was all about; my inability to keep the fleet together because the game AI is so hell-bent on sending ships out on their own.

If the design concept of the game is every ship needs to stand on its own then a) that's terrible design and b) good to know, I'll stop playing and stop posting about my problems, since the game won't ever make sense to me.

Thanks all for taking the time to read and comment.

[Hatter]

Huh. Generally I get ships to stick together fairly well with escort orders. Is that not happening with you?

[DirectionsToL3Please]

Huh. Generally I get ships to stick together fairly well with escort orders. Is that not happening with you?

Not even close. Even disregarding the habit of teleport-capable ships to just decide to go all Red Six and strafe the Death Star on their own, any ship I assign as an escort will invariably pursue enemy harrasser ships far enough to get split off their escort target, and then I have two ships working suboptimally instead of a ship plus escort doing things that make sense.

[Grievous69]

Paragon. The universal slots can theoretically be used for something other than heavy needlers / HVD.

This is seriously the first time I've ever seen missiles used in those universal slots in my 7 years of playing this game... Well that explains a lot then, by a lot I mean this build is waaaacky.

@Thaago
Come on 15 OP is barely felt on a Paragon for such a good campaign/combat mod. CR recovery alone is huge on a battleship that you're going to use every single fight, not even mentioning all other reductions so you don't burn trough everything by just existing. Efficiency overhaul gets so much flak I don't know why, I've seen people use much worse hullmods on capitals and no one says anything.

I swear every time there's a post with someone saying AI is broken and bad and can't do a thing in combat, it's ALWAYS due to people throwing random stuff on a ship or using autofit. There really should be a quick course or tutorial in game that's mandatory, that explains how to make a decent build in general. That's the single hardest thing in the game with a crazy steep learning curve, and imo the biggest reason why new players get frustrated and quit the game since they think it's too hard (I mean it is honestly).

[SCC]

Was this an autofit loadout? If so... ouch. It also somehow horribly messed up the weapon groups - bad enough I'd actually file a bug report about it if that wasn't you or if hitting the auto weapon group button doesn't fit it!

I've never seen autofit put wildly different weapons in the same weapon groups, unless it had no choice, which it has in this case.
I'm not sure if it would replace Heavy Needlers with Annihilator Pods, either.

[Thaago]

Ships aren't required to stand on their own, no - cooperation between ships is important. Its more that ships don't do well when they are outnumbered, outclassed, and don't have support: they naturally retreat in those situations to try and save themselves, because otherwise they will quickly die. It sounds like the ships near the paragon are getting pushed back because the paragon is bad and can't help them- unfortunately they just don't make very good short ranged brawlers because they are very slow (even with the hullmod) and don't have access to a lot of the best short range brawling weapons - then the paragon gets surrounded and popped.

Hit 'Q' (weapon group auto assign) in the weapon group screen. Even without any other changes if you push it you should see an immediate improvement in this ship's performance.

In terms of teleport capable ships, are you talking about the Radiant in particular? Because every AI core is hard wired to be ultra-reckless ('fearless' I think is the designation). This is just the way the AI ships fight yeah, its occasionally annoying on the player side (though it makes them good enemies).

Escorts (with the escort order, not defend) stay quite close except when they can't keep up, so thats surprising to hear. Could you give a screenshot of a battle in the command menu where its happening, so we can see the orders and give you some specific advise?

@Grievous69
You're right, its not a terrible hullmod in general for OP rich capitals, but it does lower combat strength, and this player's complaints are about the combat strength/build of the ship.

[DirectionsToL3Please]

High Scatter Amplifier is going to cripple the tachyon lance ranges

I don't understand why, though I'm not going to say you're wrong.  The max range on a Tachyon lance is 1,000; with HSA, it drops to 700.  Then the 15% penalty from Unstable (which, as I mentioned previously, I now understand to have been a rookie mistake) is offset by the 15% increase from Gunnery Implants.  The other beam weapons on the ship aren't affected by the range limit of HSA so they're a wash.  So I'm only losing engagement from 701-1000 with the lances, but the ship should be closing anyway because the Pulse Lasers which represent a huge chunk of potential damage output are limited to 600 anyway.  And then once I'm in range of the Pulse Lasers everything is getting the +30% damage boost from Energy Weapons Specialist.

From a first-time-through-the-game perspective, that seems like a very small trade-off to get hard flux and increased damage.  What am I missing?

In terms of teleport capable ships, are you talking about the Radiant in particular? Because every AI core is hard wired to be ultra-reckless ('fearless' I think is the designation). This is just the way the AI ships fight yeah, its occasionally annoying on the player side (though it makes them good enemies).

Escorts (with the escort order, not defend) stay quite close except when they can't keep up, so thats surprising to hear. Could you give a screenshot of a battle in the command menu where its happening, so we can see the orders and give you some specific advise?

Not just the Radiant, but also the Radiant, yes.  Also whatever that little circular high-tech destroyer is, and the Wolf, and also that high-tech light cruiser with the plasma burn.  All three of those I ended up scrapping in disguast after half a dozen fights where they tore off ahead of the fleet even despite being given escort orders, and got themselves killed before the main engagement even happened.  Man that light cruiser, especially, was suicidal.

I'll run a combat or two a little later today to get a screenshot of the chaos.  Shouldn't take more than two fights to have my escorts go zooming off; pretty sure it happens way more than 50% of the time, even accounting for observer bias.

Pressing Q did indeed rearrange the weapons groups, so thank you for that tip.  It didn't make much sense as it was, but I also didn't feel confident changing it manually.  Hopefully it helps the combat performance a bit.

[SCC]

You could try to autoassign weapon groups on all of your ships and see if that improves things.

[Yunru]

I don't understand why, though I'm not going to say you're wrong.  The max range on a Tachyon lance is 1,000; with HSA, it drops to 700.  Then the 15% penalty from Unstable (which, as I mentioned previously, I now understand to have been a rookie mistake) is offset by the 15% increase from Gunnery Implants.

There's three types of range modifiers in the game: Base multipliers, fixed modifiers, and total modifiers, with that order of operation. AFAIK, penalties are all total modifiers, and bonuses never are.

So your Tachyon Lances are (probably) being boosted to 1150 by gunnery, then reduced to 675 by HSA, then reduced to ~574 by Unstable Injectors.

[DirectionsToL3Please]

So your Tachyon Lances are (probably) being boosted to 1150 by gunnery, then reduced to 675 by HSA, then reduced to ~574 by Unstable Injectors.

HSA clearly states that it modifies the base range of the weapon before other modifiers are considered, so I feel like that's not how it should go.  I think it should go
700(HSA) x 1.15(Gunnery) x 0.85(Unstable), which I guess is 684, not 700.

But again, I'm new.

edit: lol.  Got so worked up I forgot the ATC completely.  So I guess it should be

700(HSA) x2(ATC) x 1.15(Gunnery) x 0.85(Unstable) for 1368

[SCC]

I don't understand why, though I'm not going to say you're wrong.  The max range on a Tachyon lance is 1,000; with HSA, it drops to 700.  Then the 15% penalty from Unstable (which, as I mentioned previously, I now understand to have been a rookie mistake) is offset by the 15% increase from Gunnery Implants.

There's three types of range modifiers in the game: Base multipliers, fixed modifiers, and total modifiers, with that order of operation. AFAIK, penalties are all total modifiers, and bonuses never are.

So your Tachyon Lances are (probably) being boosted to 1150 by gunnery, then reduced to 675 by HSA, then reduced to ~574 by Unstable Injectors.

He seems to be playing on RC5, where HSA reduced the base range of beams to 700. (700 x 2 + 700 x 0,15) x 0,85 = 1279 is a way better deal than 574.

[Thaago]

The game does not explain the way that weapon range works very well at all (and the tooltip doesn't update, as has been a recent suggestion), so what you wrote is very reasonable on first glance, but its not the full picture.

The way range is calculated is that the "base range" is first multiplied by (1 + the sum of all bonuses) then by (the product of all maluses in form (1-malus)). Paragons have a base +100% hullmod, and gunnery implants gives +15%, so a 'full' range tach lance paragon (without advanced optics, which is tacked on afterwards I believe) is 1000*(1+1.00+.15) = 2150 range. With unstable injector it becomes 1000*(2.15)*(1-.15) = 1827.5 range.

High scatter amplifier operates on the base range and reduces all range past 200 by 50%, so 1000 becomes 600. (200 + (1000-200)*.5). So the 'full' range goes to 1290 and the range with unstable injector goes to 1096.5. So its roughly cutting the range in half compared to a 'normal' paragon. Attached is a picture of a paragon (just mission sim, so no gunnery implants) with an HVD and a Tach lance with HSA - the outermost yellow mark near the top of the shot is the range of the HVD. Without HSA, the tach lance would reach to just shy of that mark (because the weapon is set slightly farther back) as they both have 1000 base range.

Unfortunately, energy weapon mastery also works on the range in combat, not the base range of the weapon. So the enemy needs to be within 600, so about halfway in on the length of the beam, to get the full damage boost from it. This isn't explained well in game.


[Edit] Oh, you're playing on a version before the more recent HSA nerf! Ok thats not as bad. Its still not great IMO but its not as bad a range hit as now.
[Double edit] aaaand it seems you already knew all of what I was typing Well, I guess I'll just remark that for a slow ship like the paragon range is very important.

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