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[BigBrainEnergy]

It's a tokened link, it only works for your pc. Just use imgur.

Should work now. Didn't know about any of that, so thanks.

[OmegaMan]

Legion is my favorite ship I usually always keep 1-2 in my end game late fleet...    I know they aren't the BEST but they are really fun to use.   

   When built right I find them effective against Ordos and pretty much anything.     I do prefer the XIV but I will use the base version with good success if I can't find the 14th ones,   I typically build it as a hold the line tank, and will let the AI handle it for most of the battle while I pilot something faster (usually Oddesey).

   Main mission goal is to overwhelm shields on capitals or slower cruisers as fast as possible from close range while tanking fire with armor and shield.  The two large mounts just don't put out enough DPS to come close to taking down anything larger than a destroyer, and it doesn't have the speed to stay in range anyway, so I build it with unstable injector, high flux pool and flux efficient small ballistics like needler and railgun and machine guns and Assault chainguns and Flak Cannon or two so the AI can't overflux it.     Fighter complement  1x Xyphos for pd while venting and 3x  Dagger maybe 1 Trident usually.  I give it integrated targeting unit which boosts ranges 40% which is way more effective than ballistic rangefinder ( @Alex why is rangefinder so bad? )  as well as Hardened Shields for 15% bonus to shield efficiency (HS gets slapped on all most of my combat ships)

When it's finally lumbered into a good central position I will switch to it and punish overextended enemy targets, burn drive right up into there face and let loose on all guns with Tridents on regroup.  Then after their shield pops (which isn't long with 10+ weapons in range) let the tridents go engage to finish them off.      Then I'll usually take command of another ship while the AI (aggressive usually) retreats to dissipate flux.   Against heavier targets the Assault Chainguns are murderous.   I've also found the tridents seem launch their astropos at very close by ships even when set to regroup floating behind the big lump,  and they reload very fast this way and don't get shot down as much.   

After burning in and popping the target, often the AI fleet will get mad AF and over extend and elongate chasing the offensive Legion,  while I fall back pop shield on and off armor tanking.. This gives my fast cruisers and destroyers a perfect opportunity to flank them.  Dooms plasma mines will make them regret this REALLY fast.    Positioning is very important tho as it's Legion is so slow, if 2-3 capitals manage to surround it with one behind it's shield arc,  it's pretty much done for and the braindead ships AI will manage to do that every so often.  Aim these Naruto charges towards weaker sections of the enemy line.

Since It really doesn't have the speed to pursue anything or keep itself in range of anything, I find it performs best when used in this Anchor / Anvil role.   The XIV missile barrages are icing on the cake but I've found it effective without them as well, as you can put the OP points into flux pool and better weapons, ITU, solar shielding, and/or heavy armor.     Ordinance Expertise is REALLY good on Officer/Players when using Legion this way.

[Space Cowboy]

Legion is an incredible ship for an ai pilot imo, especially the XIV variant which I always seem to find at least one of floating around the sector in every playthrough. 40 DP is an absolute steal. The fact that it has 2 large missile mounts means its going to be automatically strong bc missile boats are overpowered, not to mention the amount of long range heavy artillery it can fire with 4 medium ballistic mounts. People seem to think its weak but I think the expensive fighters and bombers are actually what is weak. If you just give it talons with recovery shuttles they will usually match or outperform even high op cost fighter and bomber wings in most scenarios while leaving you with enough op to make the ship itself an absolute beast.

Steady AI with Elite missile spec/Ordinance Expertise/Helmsmanship/Impact mitigation, and normal Gunnery Implants/ Polarized armor (ballistic mastery/ pd specialization would be fine as well) I had two of these with some support apogees, tempests, and tank monitors and smashed a 1 mil remnant bounty with a bunch of remnant capitals in the fleet and tons of cruisers without losing a single ship. I think I had lucky fight rng but regardless I highly recommend giving this a try. I'm sure this loadout could still be improved, I like some of the other suggestions in this thread and will test them out but this has been putting in work for me.

Edit: If vanilla replace that tethra smartgun from the front mount with a heavy mauler or another hvd. Btw if you're wondering why the other legion was less effective in the combat report below, it has a lower level officer and only 1 S mod. I'm also including a simulation where my Legion solos 2 onslaughts and a conquest without breaking a sweat, I used spoilers to hide the images so this post doesn't take up a whole page of the discussion. I realize this is not the most impressive thing considering it has S mods and an officer vs sim ships but it never went over 50% flux the whole fight.

Spoiler

Here is my Loadout:


Combat Report:


Legion Solos 3 Capitals in Sim:


Sim Combat Report:

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[BigBrainEnergy]

I give it integrated targeting unit which boosts ranges 40% which is way more effective than ballistic rangefinder ( @Alex why is rangefinder so bad? )

Ballistic rangefinder stacks with ITU. Let's say you have hellbores or mark IX autocannons in your large slots, and railguns in your small slots. The large weapons have 900 range and the railguns have 700 range. Ballistic rangefinder brings the range of your railguns up to 900, matching the large weapons, and then your targeting unit boosts them all by 60%.

*EDIT*
To be clear, this is different from advanced optics which gives you a flat 200 range whether or not you have an ITU. The range bonus from ballistic rangefinder gets multiplies by your targeting unit.

[gG_pilot]

Legion is an incredible ship wondering why the other legion was less effective in the combat report below,

Combat report mod was fixed recently. There was a error regarding rockets damage.
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11551.0
Could you update Mod and do the fight again?  You know, for  science ... .

[Space Cowboy]

Legion is an incredible ship wondering why the other legion was less effective in the combat report below,

Combat report mod was fixed recently. There was a error regarding rockets damage.
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11551.0
Could you update Mod and do the fight again?  You know, for  science ... .

Oh dang, I'll have to update and rerun the numbers in that case but the battle results were still pretty easy victories vs tough fleets. I will let you know the new results.

[BigBrainEnergy]

People seem to think its weak but I think the expensive fighters and bombers are actually what is weak. If you just give it talons with recovery shuttles they will usually match or outperform even high op cost fighter and bomber wings in most scenarios while leaving you with enough op to make the ship itself an absolute beast.

Overall your build seems workable, especially if it's intended to act as anchor that stalls out the enemy with its impressive kinetic + emp damage while other ships deal the killing blow.

That being said, this one bit is rather questionable advice. You say talons will outperform more expensive options, but the damage numbers in your tests are quite low. Yeah, talons are cheap, but I really don't like them. If you can squeeze out a few more ordnance points, try 2 broadswords + 1 claw + 1 anything.

[Space Cowboy]

People seem to think its weak but I think the expensive fighters and bombers are actually what is weak. If you just give it talons with recovery shuttles they will usually match or outperform even high op cost fighter and bomber wings in most scenarios while leaving you with enough op to make the ship itself an absolute beast.

Overall your build seems workable, especially if it's intended to act as anchor that stalls out the enemy with its impressive kinetic + emp damage while other ships deal the killing blow.

That being said, this one bit is rather questionable advice. You say talons will outperform more expensive options, but the damage numbers in your tests are quite low. Yeah, talons are cheap, but I really don't like them. If you can squeeze out a few more ordnance points, try 2 broadswords + 1 claw + 1 anything.

I have tried every fighter and bomber wing in different combos but they always die without doing much and then have twice the replacement rate of talons and cost many times more op. The talons main contribution is distraction and causing enemy ships to spend flux to shoot them down rather than doing damage. They do good damage against weaker/ smaller ships but I'm not showing those battles.

[Grievous69]

People use Recovery Shuttles? You see something new every day huh.

[Space Cowboy]

People use Recovery Shuttles? You see something new every day huh.

You certainly don't have to, but I've found I don't have many crew deaths even with talon spam with fighter uplink and recovery shuttles. The ship would be stronger without them but more expensive to field. It's performing quite well in spite of the 15 op for an economy mod.

I updated Detailed Combat Results and ran another sim, this time against a Paragon and Astral pair. The missiles are showing less damage but still quite impressive. I'll go find a real battle and update this post with that log as well in case anyone is curious:

Spoiler

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[Thaago]

I used half Talons, half Gladius on my Legion builds for a while with a similar loadout (though no recovery shuttles ). The Gladii flares and kinetic damage really help the whole group be more effective, and they have the same 20 second total rebuild time so they don't murder replacement rate.

[Space Cowboy]

I used half Talons, half Gladius on my Legion builds for a while with a similar loadout (though no recovery shuttles ). The Gladii flares and kinetic damage really help the whole group be more effective, and they have the same 20 second total rebuild time so they don't murder replacement rate.

Interesting, I'll have to give that a shot as well.

[BigBrainEnergy]

I have tried every fighter and bomber wing in different combos but they always die without doing much and then have twice the replacement rate of talons and cost many times more op. The talons main contribution is distraction and causing enemy ships to spend flux to shoot them down rather than doing damage. They do good damage against weaker/ smaller ships but I'm not showing those battles.

A few things of note: solo ship sim battles are always going to favor distraction oriented fighter strategies because you don't have other ships to take the heat off of you. On top of that, double onslaught is terrible for testing fighters because you're facing down 4 devastator cannons which were explicitly designed to wipe out fighters.

And even then, I tested out two legion builds. The first had talons, and the second was identical except I cut back on flux stats to buy better fighters.

Spoiler

[close]

I know it doesn't look like the xyphos did much, but there's a bug with combat results that it doesn't count the missiles they shoot down. That being said, they are probably a suboptimal choice on a long range ship like this. While the fighters struggled to do anything to the onslaughts, the claws were able to deliver critical emp damage to the conquest keeping it locked down for most of the battle which is probably why the second build ended the fight faster and took less damage.

I've used similar builds in real combat against remnants and found that it still works quite well, so this isn't just a case of sim bias.

I used half Talons, half Gladius on my Legion builds for a while with a similar loadout (though no recovery shuttles ). The Gladii flares and kinetic damage really help the whole group be more effective, and they have the same 20 second total rebuild time so they don't murder replacement rate.

I haven't tried this pairing before, but it sounds like a decent budget-friendly option. I still feel a gut level rejection of talons though, so maybe I'll try it with thunders.

[Space Cowboy]

A few things of note: solo ship sim battles are always going to favor distraction oriented fighter strategies because you don't have other ships to take the heat off of you. On top of that, double onslaught is terrible for testing fighters because you're facing down 4 devastator cannons which were explicitly designed to wipe out fighters.

And even then, I tested out two legion builds. The first had talons, and the second was identical except I cut back on flux stats to buy better fighters.

Spoiler

[close]

I know it doesn't look like the xyphos did much, but there's a bug with combat results that it doesn't count the missiles they shoot down. That being said, they are probably a suboptimal choice on a long range ship like this. While the fighters struggled to do anything to the onslaughts, the claws were able to deliver critical emp damage to the conquest keeping it locked down for most of the battle which is probably why the second build ended the fight faster and took less damage.

I was basing my opinion not just on sim tests but on real battles over the course of several playthroughs using similar loadouts but that being said I tried out your layout vs a different sim fleet and it was quite effective.

I dumped recovery shuttles and tried a few different legion variants including the one you suggested against a Paragon, Conquest, Eagle, and Aurora and these were the results:

Spoiler

Test 1 (I trolled a bit and forgot to turn on auto pilot at the start so the ship took extra damage): talons w/ hardened shields

Result: It was a little sketchy but we pulled it out in the end.

Test 2: 3 broadswords and a claw against the same fleet

Result: Sim fleet easily killed the Legion

Test 3: 2 broadswords 1 claw 1 xyphos against the same fleet:

Result: I accidently used 1 modded broadsword but I don't think it made a huge difference. The Legion easily won, the Xyphos were able to keep the cruisers and missiles at bay long enough for the numbers to even out

[close]

I'm not super impressed with the broadswords, but the claw and xyphos were pretty strong. I might try 2 talons or 2 gladii with a claw and a xyphos next. The only issue is I can't seem to find gladii anywhere in my current playthrough lol.

edit: here's one more against Astral/ Paragon/ Aurora/ Eagle, this time with hardened shields 2 talons, 1 xyphos, 1 claw

Spoiler

Result: easy victory for the legion, it took a while to finish off the Astral after running out of missiles though.

[close]

[BigBrainEnergy]

I don't like putting xyphos on long range builds because the ion beams stay inactive the vast majority of the time, but they are very good at discouraging flankers which are otherwise a big weakness of sniper builds. They also give you some rear facing pd which is something the legion notably lacks.

Bombers are another story entirely. In AI they suck because the AI chooses targets entirely at random, accomplishing nothing but burning through replacement rate. The only exception would be the astral which can still score kills due to the sheer volume of bombers it can field, and maybe the heron with triple cobra although that one is useless against anything but capitals and stations.

On the other hand bombers are very good in player hands on a legion, especially when you use squalls to overwhelm and distract enemy pd during a bombing run.

Video evidence:

Spoiler

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Scorecard:

Spoiler

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