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Author Topic: We need weapons that counter fast ships  (Read 4284 times)

TaLaR

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #30 on: January 12, 2022, 02:25:50 AM »

With full phase corps bonus Afflictor has enough PPT to use up all 30 of AMB shots (extra magazines hullmod). You don't even reach past-PPT CR degradation (which wouldn't matter anyway, I'd swap to next Afflictor before that).
And I do shoot at rate fairly close to AMB reload rate. Short approach - shoot - short retreat - vent - repeat.

Phase Anchor is actually useless on Afflictor. You'd need to use wrong tactics to benefit from it's effect. Which is staying in phase after shot instead of venting immediately to reload AMBs faster. But this doesn't reload system any faster and drops your speed like a rock, especially considering that phase anchor is mutually exclusive with mandatory Adaptive Phase Coils.
« Last Edit: January 12, 2022, 02:27:37 AM by TaLaR »
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Ibudoto

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #31 on: January 12, 2022, 03:06:12 AM »

(which wouldn't matter anyway, I'd swap to next Afflictor before that).
Well, then it's same for the SO Hyperion, you can just swap to next ship and basically throw the PPT and CR system out of the window.

Phase anchor is massively op because it make reloading weapons 6 times faster. Say, by the time Paragon shoot Techyon Lance 2 times Ziggurat can shoot 12 times. It also allows you to vent 20000 flux within few second, faster than venting. Even smaller ships can shoot AM twice more times. It also allow you to shoot Rift Torpedo Launcher every few second which is massively overpowered nuclear weapon. I suppose Adaptive Phase Coils is good too but I think Phase Anchor is just too op.
« Last Edit: January 12, 2022, 03:16:56 AM by Ibudoto »
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TaLaR

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #32 on: January 12, 2022, 04:30:37 AM »

Player piloted Afflictor is a lot stronger and more efficient: 20% CR per fight/10DP vs 40%/15DP.

To use Phase Anchor on Afflictor you have to do several attacks without venting and let hard flux accumulate. Which in particular without Adaptive Coils kills speed and prevents you from bypassing shields. Despite twice faster reload this is worse, because now you have to fight enemy flux pool instead of bypassing it entirely.

Phase Anchor is strong only on larger ships that could not bypass shield by maneuverability anyway.

Adaptive Coils mod is a band aid - phase mobility was even better before this patch. But for Afflictor it's a necessary band aid in current patch.
« Last Edit: January 12, 2022, 05:06:52 AM by TaLaR »
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rhubarb

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #33 on: January 12, 2022, 06:25:13 AM »

Phase Anchor is actually useless on Afflictor. You'd need to use wrong tactics to benefit from it's effect. Which is staying in phase after shot instead of venting immediately to reload AMBs faster. But this doesn't reload system any faster [...]

OTOH, it does let you get two AMB shots off in one system activation window.

I'm no expert Afflictor pilot, but my pattern is close to yours--

Short approach - shoot - short retreat - vent - repeat.

Short approach - shoot - phase - shoot again - phase to vent soft flux while retreating - vent - repeat

My phase anchor Afflictor is definitely slower than yours, but it's still plenty fast for anything I've tried to do/run away from. (But again I'm no expert.)
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TaLaR

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #34 on: January 12, 2022, 10:37:20 AM »

An Afflictor must be fast enough to out-turn enemy's omni shield. Which against an accelerated shields capital or just a destroyer takes really high speed. I mean sure, sluggish anchor ship can still hit forward shielded ships. But why would I want to constraint my super ship to only half of available targets?

And anchor variant does NOT do twice the damage. Normal Afflictor can perfectly sync up 4 AMB with it's system to do 6 AMB worth of damage each time. On almost exactly same tile of enemy armor, to reduce effect of that as well. Anchor Afflictor can only operate 3 AMB (10 OP for the expensive hullmod), and realistically won't hit same tile of enemy armor.

But you are also right that Anchor allows to land 2 salvos in same system activation, I didn't consider this because my classic pattern is to use system from afar before cloaking, so that I can dissipate it's soft flux activation cost before salvo (4 AMB runs on really tight flux budget).

However, landing second salvo in a short window with greatly reduced speed is too hard to do safely even for me. I could only manage it while taking a lot of damage, and not from a proper kill position (= not safe from their death explosion). Even if it has theoretically higher damage ceiling, it's practically unpilotable for 2nd salvo against accelerated omni shield (my default testing dummy is sim Paragon). And much lower mobility makes it prey to fighters.
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Kanjejou

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #35 on: January 12, 2022, 11:32:57 AM »

The fast turning mod for turret allow most weapons to stay perfectly on target
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Null Ganymede

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #36 on: January 12, 2022, 04:57:05 PM »

Phase anchor Afflictor seems fine for maximizing damage output per second when supporting a particular flank of your fleet. It's probably not optimal for soloing stuff, but I'd honestly prefer a Shade for solo. Evading even non-modded fighters and missiles gets annoying.

The only hard flux a phase anchored ship vents is from cloak duration. You're never venting weapon flux.
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Vanshilar

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #37 on: January 13, 2022, 09:42:17 AM »

The window of opportunity isn't much shorter than other ships - PPT time is vastly outweighed by CR decay time, especially for SO ships.

...The recent Wolfpack Tactics nerf to PPT was clearly aimed at Hyperion, without considering how minor the impact is when post-PPT CR decay rate is so easily countered by Combat Endurance + Hardened Subsystems without Delicate Machinery.

I want to expound on this a bit, and in particular about how CR degradation works.

Once peak time runs out, CR begins to decay at a rate of 1% every 4 seconds. If the ship has either Combat Endurance or Hardened Subsystems, the stated effect is that they decrease the CR degradation rate by 25%. What it really means is that the ship loses 1% CR every 4/0.75 = 5.333 seconds. If the ship has both, then it's 1% every 4/0.75/0.75 = 7.111 seconds. Indeed, you can check that you can take a ship, stick both CE and HS on it, and you'll find that its CR will degrade roughly 1% for every 7 Heavy Blaster shots (or whatever other weapon you want to use as a timer). This is regardless of Safety Overrides; SO does not affect CR degradation, only the peak time before CR degradation starts taking place.

What this means is that after a ship's peak time runs out, if it has both CE and HS and assuming it started at 100% CR, then it has 60*7.111 = 427 seconds of combat time before it reaches 40% CR, the point where it starts risking malfunctions. That's over 7 minutes of time after peak time is over. It then has another 40*7.111 = 284 seconds before CR drops to 0, for a total of 711 seconds that it can fight, after peak time runs out. Just shy of 12 minutes.

Taking the Hyperion for example, it has 120 seconds of base peak time. It can get another 60 seconds from Wolfpack Tactics, and another 30 seconds from Elite Systems Expertise, for a total of 210 seconds. Without CE nor HS, its CR would degrade at 1% every 4 seconds, and thus it would get another 60*4 = 240 seconds before risking malfunctions, for a total of 450 seconds.

But if it takes SO, and also CE and HS, then its base peak time increases to (210+60+60)/3 = 110 seconds. It then has an additional 427 seconds before risking malfunctions, for a total of 537 seconds. So CE and HS are more than enough to cover for SO cutting its peak time down to 1/3 of base. It has less than 2 minutes at peak, but another 7 minutes before it has to worry about malfunctions. So CE and HS make the short peak time penalty of SO fairly trivial. This is shown visually in the attached graph, plotting the Hyperion's CR as a function of combat time, with and without CE and HS.

Against that 537 seconds, an SO Hyperion losing 20 seconds of peak time from the recent Wolfpack Tactics change was basically chump change. In the attached graph, you can imagine the blue line being shifted to the right by 1/3 of a square; that was the effect of the change.

(As a side note, since I don't think you can get negative CR, this means that once a Hyperion hits 40% CR in combat, you might as well as keep it in unless it risks dying, since its CR will become 0% after combat anyway. So its combat below 40% CR is basically free, unless it dies.)

This property of CE and HS mitigating the effect of the shortened peak time of SO is true for all ships, by the way, not just the Hyperion. It basically puts an additional cost on SO, if you want the SO ship to handle longer battles; however, given how much benefit SO gives to the ship, that cost is usually worth it.

[attachment deleted by admin]
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #38 on: January 13, 2022, 09:55:57 AM »

CR affects damage dealt, damage taken, and maneuverability (there's a 20% swing in these stats based on CR level). Low CR ships are much more vulnerable, and deal significantly less damage. Critical malfunctions will also randomly disable weapons and engines, and I think even shields, so sub 20% CR ships are very likely to die. Leaving ships out while CR is decaying is definitely sometimes worthwhile, but it's also very much not just more PPT.
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FenMuir

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #39 on: January 13, 2022, 11:45:46 AM »

Carriers do a fantastic job of countering fast ships.
Many hangar units are faster than the fastest ships.
My current setup uses the Blitzkrieg Heron:
Spoiler
[close]
in conjunction with the Medley Mora:
Spoiler
[close]

The Medley Mora maintains air superiority, kills frigates, and tanks for the Heron. The Blitzkrieg Heron kills everything larger than a frigate with relative ease while hiding behind the Mora.

Check it out some time.
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Nightstrasza

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #40 on: January 13, 2022, 12:23:15 PM »

Then you get dooms, paladin radiant or a dorito and your swarm stops existing, fast ships are not only frigates. Also, your vidoes are about killing a super slow dominator, sure, the mora build is very good against frigates, the heron will get eaten by them tho and in any case, bombers are too slow to catch anything that isn't right next to the carrier or isn't a slow low tech or a capital ship. Looks like a breakfast for the true speedy bois.
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FenMuir

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #41 on: January 13, 2022, 12:31:30 PM »

Then you get dooms, paladin radiant or a dorito and your swarm stops existing, fast ships are not only frigates. Also, your vidoes are about killing a super slow dominator, sure, the mora build is very good against frigates, the heron will get eaten by them tho and in any case, bombers are too slow to catch anything that isn't right next to the carrier or isn't a slow low tech or a capital ship. Looks like a breakfast for the true speedy bois.


Mayhap you should go try it instead of trying to think of every conceivable hard-counter. I win battles against 3 star fleets with no losses while not piloting anything and just commanding. When I have spare DP, I just throw out an erradicator and go have fun killing the enemy's back line.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2022, 12:42:53 PM by FenMuir »
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Nightstrasza

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #42 on: January 13, 2022, 12:44:07 PM »

I'm impressed, and the afflictor I assume is as your command ship for extra command points regen? My experience was different as I tried using mono fleet of bombers not fighters since thought that fighters just gonna get eaten since they need to go face to face against the enemy and proceed to kill all the hangars to 30%. Was so dissapointed that I abandoned the run before getting moras. How about a paladin radiants with their buddies mixed in? or the story phase fleet with 2 or 3 (forgot) s mods built in?, I also seen some faction fleets having some nasty stuff against strike craft, like lots of vulcans, champions with paladins, devastators etc.

Also will add in, you must love old school runescape if you srsly grinded all those 5 d-mods, I hope carrier mono-fleet can work without that?, I never done that in previous update nor in this one since don't wanna grind.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2022, 12:49:38 PM by Nightstrasza »
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #43 on: January 13, 2022, 01:05:45 PM »

I think the reduced DP cost (11 vs base 20) from support doctrine + derelict contingent is probably what's enabling that. You get almost twice as many ships and fighters. I saw someone doing something similar with apogees. I wouldn't be surprised if there are lots of related strategies involving spamming reduced DP ships.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2022, 01:07:59 PM by intrinsic_parity »
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FenMuir

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Re: We need weapons that counter fast ships
« Reply #44 on: January 13, 2022, 01:17:14 PM »

I'm impressed, and the afflictor I assume is as your command ship for extra command points regen? My experience was different as I tried using mono fleet of bombers not fighters since thought that fighters just gonna get eaten since they need to go face to face against the enemy and proceed to kill all the hangars to 30%. Was so dissapointed that I abandoned the run before getting moras. How about a paladin radiants with their buddies mixed in? or the story phase fleet with 2 or 3 (forgot) s mods built in?, I also seen some faction fleets having some nasty stuff against strike craft, like lots of vulcans, champions with paladins, devastators etc.

Also will add in, you must love old school runescape if you srsly grinded all those 5 d-mods, I hope carrier mono-fleet can work without that?, I never done that in previous update nor in this one since don't wanna grind.
The video is not mine, but it is what gave me the inspiration for the Medley Mora and Blitzkrieg Heron. They are working amazingly well.
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