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[Thaago]

My one comment on this last build: since you've built in missile racks, its probably worth lowering caps to mount medium missiles. Even if its just pilums, pilums are actually good now (for 7OP) and can be left on autofire. Sabots would give anti-capital shield burst too in case an enemy cap burn drives/teleports closer than the ship wants (and since this ship has decent but not overwhelming anti-shield damage, a nice 4k damage spike on demand seems like a good fit).

[BigBrainEnergy]

The important weapons for my Conquest are 2x Gauss, 2x Hurricane, 2x Salamander MRM, 2x Devastators on the off-side, Ion Beam on the firing side, and everything else is point defense.
Again, large missiles are my main weapons, so ECCM and EMR are priority hullmods.

This is, quite literally, exactly the build I use.

[Schwartz]

I would agree with you Thaago, but kitting Conquest is like an uncomfortable straddle. I paid 30? OP for 36 OP worth of missiles, meaning enough Locusts to last through most battles. Being thrifty and adding more missiles will 1. lose me 10% flux capacity and 2. add missiles that don't behave like Locusts. They could work or they could be PD bait. Flux is breathing room. Flux is ammo.

[Euphytose]

I just took on a 2 Conquests bounty with my Paragon and a fleet of ships full of d-mods. Absolutely demolished the Conquests with the Paragon. I struggle really hard (meaning I cannot beat) bounties with other capitals, but Conquest is extremely easy. And I got paid the same, win-win.

I'll be really blunt here, I discussed this many times before in other threads, but I think the Conquest is, no more no less, a POS ship. The AI can't use it, the player struggles (at least for me).

If you need godlike piloting skills to even reach 80% of what an Onslaught or Paragon can do, then why bother?

[Igncom1]

It packs a lot of bang, but are more easily killed.

But comparing anything to a Paragon feels wrong, that ship is honestly uncharacteristic of HighTech being so slow like that.

[Schwartz]

It's a glass cannon. If you can use it, you take advantage of a lot of offensive power and range and smash pretty much everything. If you're out of position, you get killed. AI Conquest is generally easy to kill because they let themselves be caught on the losing side of a flux battle. That's where player Conquest would flick the ship system and back off.

[Xuerian]

I'm quite new to the game comparatively, but running a (mostly) vanilla (Nex only) game, the Conquest has always been my turning point. Fighting fleets with than one have been at best a chore until I have one, their ability lets them duck out of aggressive manuvers and the AI holds a line pretty well with large fights. Even the reaper Doom I stumbled on before them had trouble with them due to the overwhelming PD on the backside, and two together blew torpedos before their engines even lit.

It's interesting to see such varying opinions on it.

After learning how to fly in the game I'm a pilot not a commander, so maybe a well commanded fleet punishes them better than I could. Anything slow couldn't catch them, anything fast would overextend the friendly line and get punished immediately. Perhaps salvage runs make this more pronounced, I've really only done them after my first.

[smithney]

I'll be really blunt here, I discussed this many times before in other threads, but I think the Conquest is, no more no less, a POS ship. The AI can't use it, the player struggles (at least for me).

Hey, I'm not a Conquest fanboy and I have to disagree. It's a polarizing ship, there's a huge disparity between the floor and the ceiling. But it's designed to be like this and it plays to the expectations very well. It's a POS in NPC hands if exposed to overwhelming firepower, which the player is usually able to do even without a Paragon. It's also POS if you don't know how to build it, use it or pilot it, there are many more ways to screw up than to succeed. However, it's a devastating hull in the hands of a player who knows what they are doing.

[Goumindong]

After learning how to fly in the game I'm a pilot not a commander, so maybe a well commanded fleet punishes them better than I could. Anything slow couldn't catch them, anything fast would overextend the friendly line and get punished immediately. Perhaps salvage runs make this more pronounced, I've really only done them after my first.

This works for conquest but also works for other big ships you cannot necessarily deal with at the moment.

And it’s the avoid command.

Probably the two least used and best commands are harass and avoid. Avoid tells your fleet to avoid that ship, obviously, and the berth given is like 2k+ Units. And your fighters won’t attack or bomb it either iirc. This works pretty well until you have to avoid too many units because the enemy fleet still likes to stick together at least a little bit and so too many avoid commands means nothing can get shot terribly well.

It works exceptionally well on very slow ships and while the conquest isn’t terribly slow it’s slow enough to save your destroyers and many cruisers from getting flattened. Once the rest of the enemy fleet has been solved you can remove the avoid command and flatten the ship now that it’s surrounded and out matched.

The harass command will have one frigate or destroyer (or ship you specifically designate) just like… bug the ship. It will back away when the ship is trying to close and then it will close if the ship is trying to back away. You know when that frigate is just like… annoyingly back there and you turn around to deal with it and it bails? AI is probably harassing you.

Harassing is a good option when you cannot strictly avoid (maybe too much density of avoid commands) and when you can be reasonably assured the ship cannot turn and crush the harasser.

[Xuerian]

Probably the two least used and best commands are harass and avoid. Avoid tells your fleet to avoid that ship, obviously, and the berth given is like 2k+ Units. And your fighters won’t attack or bomb it either iirc. This works pretty well until you have to avoid too many units because the enemy fleet still likes to stick together at least a little bit and so too many avoid commands means nothing can get shot terribly well.

It works exceptionally well on very slow ships and while the conquest isn’t terribly slow it’s slow enough to save your destroyers and many cruisers from getting flattened. Once the rest of the enemy fleet has been solved you can remove the avoid command and flatten the ship now that it’s surrounded and out matched.

The harass command will have one frigate or destroyer (or ship you specifically designate) just like… bug the ship. It will back away when the ship is trying to close and then it will close if the ship is trying to back away. You know when that frigate is just like… annoyingly back there and you turn around to deal with it and it bails? AI is probably harassing you.

Harassing is a good option when you cannot strictly avoid (maybe too much density of avoid commands) and when you can be reasonably assured the ship cannot turn and crush the harasser.

Thanks for the advice. In my first/standard run, I used those two a good bit and found them very useful.

In my most recent run I haven't been, so I'm sure I'm not helping myself there.

That said at this point ("Chaos factor"-ing the base factions, not to remnants+ yet), I'm running a couple herons, three conquests, two champions, and two omens (With gunnery+ officers), and the only real problem I have is one or two of them wandering off, overextending, and dying.

With me on the front, if they would sit within screen distance of me and cover flanks/support fire, we can chew through anything as the AI mispositions one by one.

How can I keep them from doing that? I've set a defend order on myself at this point, I think I've tried a defend point order slightly behind me, but they're all Aggressive officers (from the frigate/destroyer times) and my current guess is that's my mistake.

Are harass and avoid things that can help me in that scenario? Should I just avoid the deathball positioning in general and try to maintain the same line into surround the AI does?

[Plantissue]

Avoid tells your ships to try to keep a certain distance away from that ship, about 3000 I think? Defend tell your ships to not stray too far from a certain point, about 1000 I think? I try not to use defend orders too much as it those type of order tends to pull random ships that are actually fighting to go defend the point when you order a ship that was formerly defending that point to do something else. Generally giving your ships the freedom to naturally from a line is much better than telling them to defend/escort around you as they will block other's firing arcs. If they wander off, that's fine as long as they are either distracting a higher DP ship or able to go kill whatever they have wandered off to kill as that is a net positive. Use orders to run back to safety if otherwise.

[Xuerian]

Avoid tells your ships to try to keep a certain distance away from that ship, about 3000 I think? Defend tell your ships to not stray too far from a certain point, about 1000 I think? I try not to use defend orders too much as it those type of order tends to pull random ships that are actually fighting to go defend the point when you order a ship that was formerly defending that point to do something else. Generally giving your ships the freedom to naturally from a line is much better than telling them to defend/escort around you as they will block other's firing arcs. If they wander off, that's fine as long as they are either distracting a higher DP ship or able to go kill whatever they have wandered off to kill as that is a net positive. Use orders to run back to safety if otherwise.

So far it hasn't been a specific threat/ship, it's been in the course of an evenly matched combat encounter when I'm trying to "circle the wagons" and have a nice shootout, they'll spread out to where I can't see them and eventually move out of position and get punished by nearby AI before I notice (I usually notice the AI suddenly swerve to surround them, at which point I can maybe intercept one of them)

But it might just be as you say, could be a better fit to pick a couple escorts and work with the tendency instead of against it.

[Goumindong]

Avoid tells your ships to try to keep a certain distance away from that ship, about 3000 I think? Defend tell your ships to not stray too far from a certain point, about 1000 I think? I try not to use defend orders too much as it those type of order tends to pull random ships that are actually fighting to go defend the point when you order a ship that was formerly defending that point to do something else. Generally giving your ships the freedom to naturally from a line is much better than telling them to defend/escort around you as they will block other's firing arcs. If they wander off, that's fine as long as they are either distracting a higher DP ship or able to go kill whatever they have wandered off to kill as that is a net positive. Use orders to run back to safety if otherwise.

Indeed. Generally i set my ships up on a line with a set of waypoint orders and then cancel all the waypoints once combat starts.