Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Salter]

The speed boost cant be that much worse compared to the Pirate Falcon, which would probably get buffed too, not that it needs it.

[BigBrainEnergy]

The falcon is in a pretty good spot right now although it would be kinda cool if they both got a shared hullmod that other human ships don't have given how closely related they are. Maybe the "energy bolt coherer" that's coming out would be good. An extra 200(?) base range on pulse lasers would make them much more viable on the eagle and I don't think it would be too powerful since they don't really have the flux to mount anything crazy without SO. I feel like I've seen this suggestion before but I can't remember where.

[itBeABruhMoment]

here

The eagle is already pretty good as an AI controlled SO ship. Above is video of an reckless AI controled eagle wailing on a dominator, note that this test was done with a reckless ai and no officer or fleet wide skills. Take a few of these and anything with homing missiles and you've got a pretty decent fleet. If the eagle is going to get more buffs, they probably shouldn't be to its base stats or system, with its current stats, buffs like that would risk making it an Aurora that costs 8 less dp. Maybe something like a built in hullmod that gives it the capital range bonus for installing targeting core hullmods.

[Grievous69]

Sim testing a SO build versus non SO... You could make a destroyer kill Dom like that man.

[itBeABruhMoment]

An SO ai destroyer would probably get overfluxed and immediately and back off before getting into range. The ai kind of needs a large flux cap to use SO ships properly except with the hyperion which can transpose itself behind the enemy instantly.

[Igncom1]

I always feel like the AI plays so much worse in the simulator that it's basically not worth using for testing, in my opinion.
And I don't have a clue as to why.

[itBeABruhMoment]

The additional ships in a real battle probably has something to do with that. For example I think ships will actually try to get behind the enemy if they have a buddy

[Sly]

@itBeABruhMoment

Respectfully, even a wing of 3 non-SO frigates can easily sink a lone Dominator. They'll do it cheaper, too.

An SO Eagle wheeling around the battlefield trying to get around a Dominator seems impressive, but really it's just exposing its engines and taking heavy fire after it's been totally surrounded. It's a big target, easy to hit with torpedoes and missiles. Except for fringe cases, it's just not practical.

If the Dominator were flanked by frigates, destroyers, and backed up by carriers you'd see a more grounded result.

If you're going to give SO to a cruiser, there are better options than the Eagle. Faster or with higher alpha strike potential, both of which are key for an SO build. If anything, I feel putting SO on an Eagle detracts from what makes it appealing: a reliable presence that persists throughout the course of a battle. Granted, I don't run cruisers until I'm guaranteed to face opponents where cruiser-class ships are essential. If you welcome the increased cost and improved tonnage a cruiser provides early on, I could definitely understand the appeal, though. It's easier to make little errors with cruisers, where smaller classes of ships would be immediately sunk.

[itBeABruhMoment]

With the excess of medium ballistics and energies I would argue that the eagle is best used as an SO ship. Ranged medium energy weapons are lackluster, and the heavy machine gun and assault chaingun are amazing SO weapons. Additionally, it does have a lot of features you would want from a SO ship, such as being relatively fast, having the same shield efficiency and caps as an Aurora, and decent burst damage capabilities with ion pulsers. SO fleets with cruisers are also viable for dealing with the AI's death blob tactics. Just look at triple radiant ordo guides from when Radiants were 40dp. Besides missiles and phase, one of the only ways to fight them with reasonable losses was to have a swarm of SO cuisers pick stragglers until the only ships left were radiants. Guess which cruiser was fast enough to play radiant hide and seek.

[Null Ganymede]

"video"

here

[close]

In a thread heavy on vibes and opinions, here's a post with (1) a concrete fit (2) definition of combined-arms fleet role (3) video evidence of AI-friendliness.

In a fleet with bombers and MRMs that fit's a killer front line hammer. Add officer and kinetic+EMP will go brrrrrr.

Gold standard for ship balance discussion imo.

[Grievous69]

Please don't entice such behaviour, we've seen enough frigate vs Onslaught 1v1s. Video showcases are almost always nice, except when it's a purposely leveraged battle so the poster tries to make his point stronger. When it reality it comes across as satirical.

[smithney]

With the excess of medium ballistics and energies I would argue that the eagle is best used as an SO ship.

Yeah, and at the same time there are other hulls in the same ballpark that are better as SO ships than Eagle is.

Anyway, there's no point in balancing hulls around SO, it's a tool for experienced players to break the game for fun. If you sideline the fact that the NPC fleets are likely never gonna use SO Eagles themselves, you are then still handing the player a hull that's subpar by default. New players are either gonna be terribly underwhelmed, or they're gonna look up cookie-cutter SO builds and stick to them. Both kill the joy of taking a cool hull and customizing it for your fleet.

[Hiruma Kai]

The eagle is already pretty good as an AI controlled SO ship. Above is video of an reckless AI controled eagle wailing on a dominator, note that this test was done with a reckless ai and no officer or fleet wide skills. Take a few of these and anything with homing missiles and you've got a pretty decent fleet. If the eagle is going to get more buffs, they probably shouldn't be to its base stats or system, with its current stats, buffs like that would risk making it an Aurora that costs 8 less dp. Maybe something like a built in hullmod that gives it the capital range bonus for installing targeting core hullmods.

In a thread heavy on vibes and opinions, here's a post with (1) a concrete fit (2) definition of combined-arms fleet role (3) video evidence of AI-friendliness.

In a fleet with bombers and MRMs that fit's a killer front line hammer. Add officer and kinetic+EMP will go brrrrrr.

Gold standard for ship balance discussion imo.

So I tried this Eagle build against the three different sim Dominators using a basic Eagle in the Last Hurrah mission setup, so as to avoid any fleet bonuses and the XIV skin.

The fact of the matter is, the Dominator used in the video is the easiest one to beat for a shield tanker.  It's got 2 Hellbores (a grand total of 125 shield DPS each from the large mounts), 3 light autocannons (the kinetic firepower of a Lasher with it's ship system down), 2 Flak and Vulcans for point defense (which doesn't help in this case because the Eagle has no missiles).

Sure, the SO Eagle can beat it.  But so can an SO Medusa (1 heavy blaster, 1 Ion Pulser, 2 Light Autocannons, burst PD, Safety Overrides, 14, 13 Vents) that's AI piloted setup under identical conditions.  The Medusa also kills it faster because of the heavy blaster.

The SO Eagle also beats the Hephaestus + Mark XI Dominator build.  But again, so does the SO Medusa.

The double Gauss Dominator turned it around and won 2 out of 2 against the Eagle (with the full assault setting and then with full assault and then eliminate order).  The Eagle fluxes up and then has to back off before being able to do too much damage.  The Dominator is at half health by the end, but the Eagle is dead (and in declining CR).  The Eagle just can't close fast enough, nor get behind it quick enough.  The Medusa also lost.

I'm pretty sure the SO Eagle will lose to an optimized player fit Dominator as well (simply by sticking on 3 Sabot Pods for shield burst or a Xyphos converted Hangar for shield piercing Ion damage).

But as far as I can tell, this test as run means that an SO 22 DP ship is performing at the level of an SO 12 DP ship or so.  And it also has issues against reasonable builds which include sufficient kinetic damage or are sufficiently long range.  Such as capitals on a firing line.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[bonerstorm]

The Eagle is indeed hot garbage. After trying for a while to make Eagles work, I gave up and swapped them for Falcons instead - which are much better ships.

The Eagle just needs more speed. That's it. Give it nearly as much speed as a Falcon so it can dodge Reapers and kite other cruisers, then it won't suck. For those who think that'll make it OP... why the hell does it cost 6-8 pts more to deploy than a Falcon or 2-4 pts more than an Apogee, when both are clearly better ships that do more damage + are more resilient?

For all I know it sucks less if you put SO on it, but I've never tried it and it conflicts with the whole "reliable mainstay of the fleet" fluff. More armor or hull would just make it a cheap imitation of Low Tech, but still probably not solve the problem - it's designed to be a sniper but it can't kite or dodge, so it'd just be a beefier snack for better ships to chew on.

Part of the other problem for me - your mileage may vary - is that I insist on flying a speed 20 fleet, so I put augmented drives on all my cruisers that don't naturally fly at 9. That means Eagles are always stuck with 40 OP less compared to Falcons.

[bonerstorm]

The thing is, Eagle is probably the least likely one to cross with hi-tech in a healthy way. It's slow and not particularly spiky. Falcon has the speed if not the bite, while Champion has the spikiness of a little Paragon. I'm of the opinion that Eagle should be its own thing, one that epitomizes midline. Midline's big thing is specialization, and what is the current midline lineup missing? The anchor. Midline does its damage on both the frontline and the backline, which means its anchor would just need to focus on the defenses. Which is why I suggested what I suggested: make it support well, or make it win flux wars in the middle of the battle as a generalist.

We can already see an example of a high-tech cruiser with generalist functions anyways if you look at the remnant and they perform so-so without an AI officer. Thats not to say it should be done, but we have a working example of it, so its not unreasonable to think there could be a smooth transition.

I dont think the eagle should be tanky. That would defeat the purpose of it being a generalist cruiser, which is not supposed to have any strong traits other than that its a generalist. Giving it a fancy new subsystem, upgrading its armor and so on would be against the entire point. About the only idea I could give would be to give it a fighter bay and some OP to mount a fighter wing for free, so it can field a wing of fighters like Thunder's, which would allow it to engage any variety of targets and be able to recall back to defend itself.

A fighter bay would not be a bad idea at all. That would make it an actual jack of all trades instead of a jack of no trades. The only way to make it tanky while keeping in line with it's niche as a main battle cruiser would be to take away the maneuvering thrusters and give it a fortress shield. Basically make it a cruiser-sized Monitor without the Flux Shunt.