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[DirectionsToL3Please]

I get Energy Mastery, which is only good for the -10% flux use at elite

It's a nice boost to Antimatter Blasters, which are already mostly used inside 600 distance. If you've got four+ ABs for up close punchiness (not a bad addition to a Doom, and after you phase around their shield arc you'll have built up enough hard flux to get benefit from it) it makes a noticeable difference.  It also does wonders for a PD Laser-heavy ship; A PD Medusa is basically a Space Roomba for missiles and fighters.

[Megas]

Which is all irrelevant if the only reason I take Energy Mastery is because it is the most useful of barely useful prerequisites for Neural Link as my eighth tech skill.  I would rather take a different skill if I could.

I do not take Tech 8 to play cute games with AMBs on human ships, I take Tech 8 because I want to pilot a godship Radiant, which is only a godship with sufficient Combat skill support, which likely means no wasted skills in Industry or Leadership.  In this case, -10% flux cost for plasma cannons is far more useful than the melee bonus which I likely will not see.

[Vanshilar]

By the way, Heavy Blaster SO Glimmers have a nasty damage output for their 5 DP (rivaling that of 15 DP Hyperions), but they do have a much higher rate of destruction than Hyperions, generally see one blown up each Ordo fight.

I'd recommend trying Brawler LP's, which have the same DP cost but have SO built-in (and thus 15 more OP to use) and AAF as their shipsystem (and thus major burst damage). I use an Assault Chaingun, a Heavy Machine Gun, and 2 Light Dual Machine Guns, with Extended Shields. All extra OP goes into cap and then the last 2 into vent, so they're a lot more survivable, and you don't need to get Automated Ships for them.

The machine guns do a lot of anti-shield damage, and as a bonus also takes care of missiles. The Assault Chaingun is a lot of damage vs armor/hull, especially with AAF. With Extended Shields, there's a shield gap of only 30 degrees, which is hard to hit since the Brawler LP is wide and thus the engines are more recessed, so in practice it's almost the same as full shields.

I've been messing around with a full fleet of Brawler LP's with Support Doctrine, and they really chew through enemy fleets. The problem is (however you want to look at it) they're too cheap or the max allowed fleet size (at 30 ships) is too little; basically with a full fleet of them you only end up with a small fleet DP-wise, which means a small battle size. But since no officers are needed, you end up with a massive XP bonus every fight, so at least you get plenty of SP. They chew through faction and [REDACTED] fleets just fine, although they have some trouble with massed fighters (mostly because the AI then just spends its time chasing down fighters, rather than engaging enemy ships -- so you need to manually tell them to go after ships) and they don't handle stations well.

[Hiruma Kai]

By the way, Heavy Blaster SO Glimmers have a nasty damage output for their 5 DP (rivaling that of 15 DP Hyperions), but they do have a much higher rate of destruction than Hyperions, generally see one blown up each Ordo fight.

I'd recommend trying Brawler LP's, which have the same DP cost but have SO built-in (and thus 15 more OP to use) and AAF as their shipsystem (and thus major burst damage). I use an Assault Chaingun, a Heavy Machine Gun, and 2 Light Dual Machine Guns, with Extended Shields. All extra OP goes into cap and then the last 2 into vent, so they're a lot more survivable, and you don't need to get Automated Ships for them.

I've been messing around with a full fleet of Brawler LP's with Support Doctrine, and they really chew through enemy fleets.

 

Makes sense, however, I wouldn't want to try that without Support Doctrine.  Which given that run through was intended to test Neural link Radiants, was a bit incompatible.

While restored Luddic Path Brawlers are definitely nice, I didn't have officers available for them, nor did I have Support Doctrine for Combat Endurance for them.    In the particular play through I was using doing a Neural link Radiant, with 5 Combat skills, 2 Leadership, and 8 Technology skills.  The choice would be between Glimmers with integrated Alpha cores, or unofficered Luddic Path Brawlers, since I had 60 spare DP in terms of automated ships, and three 5 DP glimmers x 4 = 60 DP.  With only 8 officers + Neural link, I was running out of officers generally because I was leaning on Wolfpack tactics.  Even with purely Hyperions and a Radiant, I would hit a ceiling of officered ships at 195 DP,  so I needed more expensive DP cost ships, not less.  However, Glimmers bypassed that problem.

Support Doctrine is strong, but really depends on what kind of play experience you're looking for in a particular campaign run.  Support Doctrine lends itself to more AI ships as opposed to a single strong player ship (although you can combine them, you can't combine them reasonably for a player run Radiant).  As it is, I don't feel a faster XP is an absolute must for me given I've run through the campaign multiple times.  At this point, I'm not playing for fastest run times (although I have also done the solo hound to end of campaign tests as well, but those finish at low levels since you don't fight).