Alex needs to give the XIV Onslaught and Dominator heavy ballistic integration of whatever that hullmod name (the one that reduces OP price of large ballistic weapons).
It is sad to see the most effective onslaught build still being 90% point defense
Don't think there is a definite "most effective", this is just what I like to do and works well enough in my fleet. Others already pointed out the heavy ballistic integration/PD considerations so not getting into that.
I think XIV Onslaught and Dominator are strong enough, they are extremely durable now and the recent changes made their damage output much better.
As about weapons, unlike the rest of the ships you mentioned, Onslaught can fire at max 3 large weapons at the same time at one target (a large one, 2 at small one)
But that's not the issue here, Onslaught simply can't perform well when more than 2 large weapons are firing at the same time due to bad flux stats. You can even see in the video posted by OP, if that was the AI it would have been dead. So this is why despite having 5 large slots, putting offense weapon in each slot feels like a noob bait simply because the price weapons (before the heavy ballistics integration) prevented the player from putting a lot of points in flux stats/hullmods
Keep in mind both Paragon and Radiant are 60 DP, and TPC is the best L energy weapon by far (arcs do suck though).
I occasionally give the Onslaught to an officer, they are very good at staying alive and dish out enough damage.
They have some turning/target switching issues so XIV Legions are better in AI hands, but I still liked them.
Great build and overall ship usage. The amount of fuel you must haul around scare me...
I love the HMG and the Vulcan cannon with the point defense skill, it absolutely shreds. You are totally using them correctly.
I am however slightly critical of you monitor builds. Machine gun on them is honestly kind of useless, they can plink away but do no real damage, and often they don't hit shields either. Even in the video imagine you have the monitors with an ion cannon. That radiant you were duking it out would be spinning with no engines easily.
Second of all is your onslaught piloting. I understand staying at high flux will lure the AI into fighting you, but radiants do that anyways, and your HMG will almost be the same range has his autopulse regardless, so its not a big deal. With ships like onslaught and even conquest, the better play would be to stay at low flux at all time, venting in between volleys of autopulse shots and anything else hurty to armor. This is where Hardened shield and that venting hullmod helps alot. An player onslaught should be able to 1v1 a radiant while taking barely any damage.
As for the dominator builds, I also agree that single autocannon is better than the dual ones, especially the accuracy is so bad on the dual ones your hitting 1 shot out of 2 anyways. But with ballistic rangefinder in the game now small railguns are my go to main DPS on the dominator. The medium slots I would put heavy mauler or hypervelocity driver depends on who I'm fighting. The two large front slots I would only use one of them and put on a storm needler. Otherwise if you want your dominator to fight at range as support dps I would use double gauss cannon. Double hephaestus only works when your sabots hit, but this combo makes the dominator useless 1/2 of the time its out there fighting. Whenever I see a ship sitting there not doing anything in the fight it hurts me inside. I would rather just have a longbow dagger carrier at that point.
Your legion build is almost exactly what I am using. Dual Squall with 4 bomber wings whos carrier is up front is so overpowered this update. You are right they are the MVPs.
Great build overall though!
Fair point on railguns.
Played around a bit more with them since and if you do not have so many other kinetic sources and/or just want better anti-small it's a perfectly fine alternative.
Monitors are a mixed bag.
2x light machine guns are super cheap, practically free to fire and 312 base kinetic DPS is very significant when it's glued to you.
Ion cannon are much nicer if the enemy already dropped the shield, but:
- it won't drop shields as much without the LMG's kinetic. I just want shields down so the fleet's HE can go to town
- monitors don't have elite TA, so ions wouldn't do as much as usual
- with elite PD and unstable injector range of ion and LMG is the same
I usually have 1 ion cannon on anything with a small energy slot, here I just want the monitors to survive everything so went for the ~6 extra OP.
Dual hephaestus on dominators because they are following a 2 squall+thunder+longbow legion, have some base kinetic of their own and are mostly there for hull damage output/bodyguard duty.
They do idle a lot, not ideal but I tend to forget about them after giving orders and tried to keep the video moving.
My Onslaught style is the hill I'll die on, got elite combat endurance and field repairs so I'll be damned if I don't use 100% of them in every single battle
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A bit more seriously, yeah Radiant 1v1s could be done much cleaner but just firing away with polarized bonus means smaller things on the sides/back basically don't do damage and Radiant is smashed/pushed away much faster.
Onslaught has more than enough armor/hull to facetank, can switch to be more conservative if they get low or there are too many plasmas/tachyons (also, tried to speed it up for video).
I should use the side armor/devastators more and should control the TPCs separately, but I'm just not that good and works well enough anyway.