Eradicator has 17 DP so Make simulation battle vs : 2 Hammerheads, 1 Mule, 1 Carrier = 37DP
This Build eats them all at once for breakfast. All AI control only.
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If you thing any other weapon is better, then lets make it a contest. Same ship Eradicator, same opponents.
So, do you agree Thumper is GOOD ?
Challenge NOT accepted, because it's completely trivial to use an officered ship to trample hapless SIM ships at only 2:1 odds - any officered loadout that can't handle tougher odds than this in the simulator would be seriously deficient, and you didn't even include any ships of the same size class. Therefore, let's up the ante by adding 2 cruisers into the mix (an Eagle and a Venture) to
double the odds to 73 DP against for a spicier and more reasonable challenge.
Same parameters: AI piloting, 6 officer skills, 2 elite skills, 2 s-mods, and no Omega weapons. The loadout is a simple HVD Breach combo:
The video is a quick and dirty build that's clearly not endgame optimized (I mean lol CH Warthogs, amirite?), but it shows how easy it is to bully multiple weak SIM targets. Some additional notes:
- Your build is a complete mess in terms of weapon selection, weapon groups, officer skills, etc. I'd suggest reading the stickied build guide on this forum as a basic starting point.
- Thumper and Shield Shunt are both "punch down" tools that are designed to bully inferior targets, so they should definitely feel strong against size-disadvantaged SIM ships. However, they're not as well suited for taking on superior enemies, such as officered ships, larger ships, and higher DP disadvantages. I ran your build against the same 73 DP SIM fleet from my video 5 times and it got completely demolished, surviving an average of 68 seconds and scoring only 1 kill across all 5 attempts.
- Simulator testing proves very little about the effectiveness of loadouts in actual battle - combat videos against Ordos fleets is the standard benchmark. There's a particular danger in over-optimizing for simulator performance (especially solo simulator performance) that don't translate into live fleet vs fleet combat.
- The (P) version of the Eradicator is generally an inferior choice to the standard Eradicator for AI piloting, so your ship selection is flawed from the very start. The Eradicator (P) is better suited as a player ship since players can make better use of mobility systems - in particular, forward-only systems like Burn Drive work much better under player use than AI use.
Welcome to the forums - there's lots to learn about Starsector!