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[Delta_of_Isaire]

The Legion is not a battleship. Stop comparing it to Onslaught - it isn't designed to go toe-to-toe with it. Would you expect a Mora to solo a Dominator? Would you expect a Heron to solo an Eagle?

"Ah but the Legion is a battle-carrier so it should do well in battle!!1!" Against cruisers, yes - Legion can do everything a Dominator can do, even while its four fighter wings are off killing a Frigate or Destroyer. But expecting the Legion to be competitive with Onslaught is silly. Doubly so because the Onslaught has the best point-defense potential of all ships in the game. Nothing is more difficult to kill with fighters/bombers than a properly build Onslaught.


The two large missiles on XIV Legion outperform most missile options for the base Legion. Double Hurricanes is better than 5 Harpoons; double Squall is better than Sabots (due to range) and arguably at least equal to 5 Annihilators (because kinetic pressure > HE pressure); 2x Locust is better than any number of PCLs (because of tracking); and 2x Cyclone Reaper has almost the same number of reapers per salvo compared to 5 Typhoons (4 vs 5) while carrying significantly more ammo (40 vs 25). That leaves 5x Pilum, however the coming update will add large-mount Pilum launchers so that advantage is about to vanish as well.

Now this should not be a surprise - the large missile advantage is the whole reason why XIV Legion is often considered to be more competitive than base Legion.

The advantages of the base Legion are twofold: access to Large Ballistics, and (consequently) better scaling on Ballistic Rangefinder. Is that enough? Clearly not or we wouldn't be having this discussion.

A good Legion build I find is 2x Hellbores, 4x Railguns in the front smalls + Ballistic Rangefinder, 2x (dual) flak in the front and 2x HMG in the sides; with up to 40 DP worth of fighters (I like 4x Lux). with the figher slots empty it can dominate SIM Dominators, and with the fighters it can win (eventually) against SIM Conquest. With skills it is much better - OE gives it enough flux to keep those weapons going and it gets a lot of mileage out of Elite Point Defense.

As noted the flux capacity is abysmal - about on par with the SIM Dominators - but S-modding ITU and Ballistic Rangefinder gives enough room for extra caps.

Much more notable I think is how changing the medium hybrids to medium ballistics would be a straight upgrade, as it allows them to fit extra Railguns or Vulcans. Or enable HACs to get 900 range from ballistic rangefinder.

[BigBrainEnergy]

Basic Legion with heavy ballistic mod vs XIV with  rockets mounts  seems balanced both  variants to me.
Then add to both versions : cheaper by -5 DP and faster by +15su
Job done.

I think that's going way too far, but if you're really confident it's not too hard to test it out. The stat sheets for ship hulls are pretty easy to find and mess around with.

[Grievous69]

The Legion is not a battleship. Stop comparing it to Onslaught - it isn't designed to go toe-to-toe with it. Would you expect a Mora to solo a Dominator? Would you expect a Heron to solo an Eagle?

Heron would stomp an Eagle lmao, but that's not the point. Ship duels are not very realistic, especially without skills. The point people in the thread tried to make is that the impact of having a base Legion in your fleet should be very similar to an Onslaught, since they cost exactly the same. Of course any decent battleship should be able to eliminate a battlecarrier of similar cost, but a battlecarrier needs to have something over the alternatives.

Also how is access to large ballistics an advantage? The weakest large mounts out of the three, and not to mention very flux intensive for ships that use them. And for the funniest bit today, let's see how much OP does Dominator have compared to a Legion. OwO what's this? Only 60 OP more when it costs 15 DP more. Then people have the guts to call Legion a "Dominator with 4 fighter wings"... Scaling seems to be a bit off there chief.

[gG_pilot]

Basic Legion with heavy ballistic mod vs XIV with  rockets mounts  seems balanced both  variants to me.
Then add to both versions : cheaper by -5 DP and faster by +15su
Job done.

I think that's going way too far, but if you're really confident it's not too hard to test it out. The stat sheets for ship hulls are pretty easy to find and mess around with.

I can do the test, what are criteria ? 

[Alex]

Heron would stomp an Eagle lmao, but that's not the point.
...
And for the funniest bit today,

(Reminder to please treat the other forum members with respect.)

[Grievous69]

Heron would stomp an Eagle lmao, but that's not the point.
...
And for the funniest bit today,

(Reminder to please treat the other forum members with respect.)

I'm confused, I was talking about the ships. "funniest bit" part was aimed at Legion when comparing with similar ship designs, as in: I just realized the difference in OP today and that got me laughing. I honestly didn't intend to make fun of anyone. Come on you know I'm not rude anymore...

[Alex]

Ah, I might've misinterpreted that then, my bad.

[Thaago]

Re: The Legion only having 60 more OP than the Dominator: thats true, but fighter bays essentially "count" as 10-15 OP each in their design, so its more like the Legion has 100 more OP. Plus the Legion has higher max dissipation than a Dominator (same base, but 50 vents instead of 30), better range, more missiles, and the large mounts are turreted rather than hardpoint (both an advantage and disadvantage), and more armor/hull/flux capacity. So its like a Dominator + 4 fighter wings... only better in almost every way. The only thing a Dominator has going over a Legion is a better layout of its small mounts for point defense (particularly the rear) and being burn 8 for cruiser fleets. Legions absolutely destroy Dominators (as they should, being 40 vs 25).

For large ballistics being an advantage: its because large ballistics are a significant step up over medium ballistics, but large missiles aren't that much of a step up over medium missiles. The large missiles are really nice its true, but medium missiles are great for being medium mounts, so the value is nearly the same even if the specifics chosen are different.

Consider just a basic Mk IX + Heph/Mjolnir/Hellbore combo/mk IX combo: its got better range than medium mounts (except HVD/Maulers, but those are only 100 more range for being much less efficient and low DPS/mount and per OP), better shot size, and better damage per OP. Now add 5 annihilator pods/typhoon reapers and compare to a Legion XIV with 2 Hammer Barrages/Cyclone Reapers. The XIV has slightly better torpedoes but honestly not that much, but much worse guns. Locusts and squalls provide options that the medium missiles can't really cover so those are good, and squalls in particular are excellent now that they have more range, but 5x Harpoons is not that much worse in terms of guided HE options and carries significantly more burst potential than Hurricanes at the cost of total ammo. The XIV is better mainly because of it being XIV and getting more OP/armor/flux, rather than mounts, in my opinion.

[intrinsic_parity]

The problem with 5 harpoon pods is that the AI will fire an entire salvo at a hound 5 seconds into the battle and then be down 30% of its ammo. Hurricanes (and large missiles in general) are just more conducive to the AIs mindless missile usage IMO. Also, hurricanes and squalls are longer range missiles which let the ship have an impact more frequently. I think that matters a lot. When I use legion XIV, most of the impact comes from the missiles because it's frequently just too slow to get into range (and I use 5x HVD so weapon range is not a problem).

[Igncom1]

Honestly I've come to love the AI's mass missile barrages. They are so silly but if my side and their side both do it, it isn't so bad!

Give em expanded missile racks and ECCMs and you can just delete a fifth of the enemy fleet in a couple seconds.

Or..... I've just come up with something to cope with the AI 

[intrinsic_parity]

Honestly I've come to love the AI's mass missile barrages. They are so silly but if my side and their side both do it, it isn't so bad!

Give em expanded missile racks and ECCMs and you can just delete a fifth of the enemy fleet in a couple seconds.

It's bad if the ship needs the missiles to be effective against heavy armor, and then doesn't have them by the point in the battle where the heavy armor is actually on the battlefield. Hurricanes naturally pace themselves (even if they get wasted a lot), and benefit just as much from ECCM and EMR.

I think hurricanes and squalls are a large clear upgrade over any medium missile. I also think cyclone reapers are an upgrade because of how much more ammo they have (you can honestly skip EMR and missile spec which frees up OP and officers skills for other things). So I would say large missiles are overall very clearly advantageous. They are getting nerfed next patch though which might change that.

I would really love if the AI had even a vague semblance of the concepts of target value and overkill though...

[Alex]

I would really love if the AI had even a vague semblance of the concepts of target value and overkill though...

(I have a feeling - and maybe I'm wrong here, but - that a lot of this is due to putting missiles in "linked" groups for larger barrages. The AI *does* have an idea of what constitutes overkill - a pretty good one, even, and it's also aware of unshielded ships re: missile use - but if the missile group is not "alternating", then it loses most of the control it can actually exercise here.)

[Draba]

I would really love if the AI had even a vague semblance of the concepts of target value and overkill though...

(I have a feeling - and maybe I'm wrong here, but - that a lot of this is due to putting missiles in "linked" groups for larger barrages. The AI *does* have an idea of what constitutes overkill - a pretty good one, even, and it's also aware of unshielded ships re: missile use - but if the missile group is not "alternating", then it loses most of the control it can actually exercise here.)

AI will fire missiles in lots of cases where it really shouldn't be doing it, some relatively clean examples:
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=21842.0

Also see Onslaughts fire Typhoons at fighters pretty often, 4 missiles in their own alternating group.
First few times thought it's a fluke but been keeping an eye on it and sometimes just does it with nothing else around, and not being close to dying.

[Thaago]

Onslaughts do routinely fire reaper torpedoes at fighters, particularly fighters launched by Astrals. I have no idea why.

When I link missile groups I'm basically accepting that I'm going to be overkilling targets and wasting missiles... but I also know that I'm going to get the kill, rather than have missiles get shot down by other ships' point defense or impact the shield of the target.

One trick I've learned recently on Enforcers with Reapers is to put the Reapers in 2 groups, each one composed of the reapers on one side of the ship, each in alternating mode. This bypasses the AI's tendency to fire 1 reaper, overload the target, and then not fire anymore because it switches to the other group to fire off another. I suspect there is some sort of anti-overkill timer on reapers that this kind of grouping can bypass to make the weapons more effective.

[intrinsic_parity]

I would really love if the AI had even a vague semblance of the concepts of target value and overkill though...

(I have a feeling - and maybe I'm wrong here, but - that a lot of this is due to putting missiles in "linked" groups for larger barrages. The AI *does* have an idea of what constitutes overkill - a pretty good one, even, and it's also aware of unshielded ships re: missile use - but if the missile group is not "alternating", then it loses most of the control it can actually exercise here.)

Are ships aware of other ships in the fleet that have already fired missiles?

Also, maybe if the AI knows that firing linked groups would be really excessive overkill (20 harpoons for a hound) it should not fire instead? Not sure if that would be the best behavior, but also not sure that there is actually good behavior in that situation. I would definitely prefer a ship with 5 linked harpoon pods to just hold fire vs a hound personally.