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[Lortus]

It's still pretty bad but it's less bad than what it seems like at first

[Vanshilar]

You could mod in Ballistic Rangefinder.

Yeah the issue is how much OP that takes up. Fortunately, looking through the combat results, it turns out that the Atlas2's don't really use up all their missile ammo against double Ordos. It cuts it a bit close, but (like the Eradicator) they use up roughly 90% of their Squalls if they have Missile Spec (elite) but no Expanded Missile Racks versus double Ordos. So they'd need EMR against triple Ordos but double Ordos are fine.

So taking out EMR and putting in BRF instead, it ended up working out pretty well. I tried running my flagship Onslaught XIV test against double Ordos, with 6 Atlas2's using dual Squalls, dual Mjolnirs, and dual Railguns with BRF, ECCM, ITU, Militarized Subsystems, and Auxiliary Thrusters, max vents, then remainder into caps, with officer skills as CE, TA, BM, MS (elite), and GI. That's 184 DP, so I set battle size to 370 DP, and I get to deploy my entire fleet at start due to BotB. Note that this means I'm using 184 DP's worth of ships against 222 DP's worth of enemy ships. However, the fleet was able to handle it just fine, usually coming in at around 300 seconds to kill the double Ordos fleet (see attached for an example). The Detailed Combat Results data for that run was:

Code

weapon	total	shield	armor	hull	hits
squall	289340	221127	16216	51997	1488
mjolnir	249762	82252	52915	114592	899
railgun	104450	78665	5745	20038	1697

The Railguns clearly contributed a lot, so even though BRF is expensive, it does help a lot. Interestingly, Railguns fired around 80% of the time of Squalls, while Mjolnirs fired a bit more than 50% of the time even at low flux, so the AI tended to turn Mjolnir off unnecessarily (i.e. at low flux) for whatever reason while Railguns were kept on. This behavior is easy to see in sim, and happens with the other Large Ballistics as well, not just Mjolnir. I'll have to try playing around with different weapon group arrangements (such as all in the same group, or 1 Mjolnir 1 Railgun per group) to see if I can get the AI to fire the Large Ballistics more often. It's silly that the player needs to resort to such non-intuitive shenanigans to make the AI work right, but that's the current state of the game.

Testing this further, Atlas2 with Gauss/Mjolnir, Gauss/Heph, or Mjolnir/Heph also performed pretty similarly. Gauss for longer range, Heph for more anti-armor at the expense of less anti-shield and less anti-hull. Heph/Heph was pretty bad though, so that takes out too much anti-shield against Ordos.

The Atlas2 with any of these Large Ballistics combinations (except the Heph/Heph) could finish the fight in around 300 seconds, coming in at over 400 DPS, while fighting against odds (50% of battle size instead of 60% of battle size), with no losses. By comparison, my Onslaught with even a full fleet of 10 Eradicators (284 seconds) or a full fleet of 11 Apogees (287 seconds) were only marginally faster, and all non-Gryphon cruisers I tested were generally at around 300 DPS or less. So the Atlas2 can clearly be made to work effectively.

I think for an operational fleet though, it'd be better to add in some frigates or Shrikes or something to take care of enemy strays that get out of the line, so that the Atlas2's don't have to chase them down, increasing the Atlas2's effectiveness. This fleet was only 184 DP, so there's another 16 DP to play with to reach 200 DP (and thus 50% of battle size at 400 battle size, and thus can deploy the entire fleet at the start with BotB).

[CapnHector]

Sick builds and I appreciate your continued contributions to Starsector science! I've been meaning to ask: mod list?

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

Yeah the issue is how much OP that takes up. Fortunately, looking through the combat results, it turns out that the Atlas2's don't really use up all their missile ammo against double Ordos. It cuts it a bit close, but (like the Eradicator) they use up roughly 90% of their Squalls if they have Missile Spec (elite) but no Expanded Missile Racks versus double Ordos. So they'd need EMR against triple Ordos but double Ordos are fine.

That's the power of your flagship. My no-flagship battles against double Ordo last around 8 minutes and EMR is definitely necessary.

[Edit]On second thought, you also have 50% more Squalls in the fleet than I do... so there's also that.

[Vanshilar]

So it turns out, results of forcing the Large Ballistics to fire have been somewhat mixed. It is possible to get them to not get turned off by pairing them with a point-defense weapon (such as Vulcan). But that means that they *really* will stay on all the time, even at high flux, so you have to be really sure that the ship won't get overwhelmed by enemy ships.

The bigger problem though is that putting a Vulcan on the ship destroys the AI's sense of range-keeping. On my long-range ships, I tend to eschew PD for this very reason; the ship ends up trying to get too close due to its PD instead of staying away. This was true even when the officers were set to steady instead of aggressive. So the Atlas2 trying to close in means that it gets hit and quickly dies. So no go on it. Completion times were fairly similar, so no real improvement in forcing a Large Ballistic to stay on.

It *might* be possible to make it work with a cautious officer, but there were too many AI failures for whatever reason for me to have much success with it. Such as ordering an Atlas2 to eliminate a frigate and it moves away instead, or one Atlas2 deciding to ram the enemy fleet including Radiant while the rest of the fleet stayed back, etc. -- keep in mind that while the Atlas2 has terrible maneuverability, it has terrible top speed as well, so it goes from full speed to full stop in roughly 100 su or so (they have Auxiliary Thrusters). Yet the Atlas2 in question decided to go from full range straight up into melee range of the enemy fleet, overload and die (and still under full control while overloaded, and still moving forward); once I saw it happening, I ordered nearby Atlas2's to go in (eliminate) to help cover, but they just stayed back. I haven't played much with cautious AI so I don't have a good feel for how it plays, but this type of inconsistent AI behavior makes it more or less unusable.

I tried grouping a Mjolnir with a Railgun, but that just means the Railgun gets turned off with the Mjolnir. Also Mjolnir with Squall, but same thing, just means Squall gets turned off. So no way that I can see of forcing it to keep Mjolnir (or other Large Ballistic) turned on, it likes to turn it off even at low flux.

Having said that, this explains why the build can be so overfluxed and yet in practice the ship won't run out of flux. The AI will simply arbitrarily turn the Large Ballistic off about 1/3 of the time, even at low flux. So you don't need to consider the full flux cost when accounting for flux. This may be why you can overflux the AI by a certain amount, but not too much, when equipping it.

Sick builds and I appreciate your continued contributions to Starsector science! I've been meaning to ask: mod list?

I play vanilla with utility mods. When I first started I used to play with a number of mods (Nexerelin, Templar, Ship/Weapon Pack, Underworld, Arkgneisis, Blackrock, Imperium, Diable Avionics, a bunch more others I'm forgetting offhand), but as I started delving into the game more I found there's a lot of depth with vanilla and haven't really used content mods since. I'm also limited in play time, going through maybe one or two playthroughs a year (and I find the whole process of colony building pretty tedious), so a lot of the time is spent testing various battle scenarios or looking at the game mechanics. Nowadays everything I post is vanilla. Utility mods I use include SpeedUp, Weapon Arcs, Combat Radar, Ship Direction Marker, and of course Detailed Combat Results, among others. Also, Additional Search Commands for the "cloneship" command which makes copies of ships, so it makes it really easy to build a fleet to test. I think that functionality is folded into the newer Ship Browser mod now.

I also edited a number of settings to make it easier to analyze battles. The "maxCombatZoom" is set to 15.0 so I can zoom all the way out to see the whole battlefield if I want. All weapons that originally had no ammo were set to have ammo of 6000 so that I can count up how many shots were fired in battle, thus allowing me to calculate hit rates of different weapons. There were also a number of QoL changes: hullmods like Solar Shielding can be installed anywhere, not dock-only, so I don't have to go back to port to make those changes. I have trouble seeing Sabots so I added a big bright purple tail to them just to make them more visible.

I also didn't feel like memorizing which world icons meant +2 ore or +1 food or whatever, so I replaced them with simple "+1M" etc. icons. Also, I have officer portraits for 1-9 that I edit the save file to match the ship, so that if I get a message that "Gryphon 3 is in trouble" or something I can just look on the map for a big "3" to find the ship quickly. Those icons are attached. They just make it easier for me to go about what I'm doing without the art slowing me down. Sorry, David.

That's the power of your flagship. My no-flagship battles against double Ordo last around 8 minutes and EMR is definitely necessary.

[Edit]On second thought, you also have 50% more Squalls in the fleet than I do... so there's also that.

Yes and no. My flagship Onslaught usually does around 1200-1500 DPS, so yes it's the biggest contributor, but the whole fleet does around 4000-5000 DPS, so the fleet does way more than I do. That's why I think soloing is a pretty dumb idea; even a Ziggurat only puts out roughly 2000 DPS or so, so you can get more XP more quickly by using a fleet rather than soloing. The fleet essentially acts as a 3x-4x damage multiplier to my flagship.

Having said that, without my flagship, the fleet would quickly fall apart. My flagship is what's keeping things together, making sure to take out key enemy targets quickly, saving my other ships when needed, etc. There's just no way that giving commands to AI ships and hoping they'll act in the way you expect is anywhere near as responsive as just piloting a ship yourself. So yes it relies on a player-piloted flagship, because it's so effective to pilot one.

Generally speaking, Large Missiles are always Squalls for me. I don't really see why anyone would want to use anything else in that slot, unless you got a Rift Torpedo or something. They are very effective at breaking up the enemy fleet and giving you the initiative at steamrolling through the enemy fleet.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

The bigger problem though is that putting a Vulcan on the ship destroys the AI's sense of range-keeping. On my long-range ships, I tend to eschew PD for this very reason; the ship ends up trying to get too close due to its PD instead of staying away. This was true even when the officers were set to steady instead of aggressive.

Weird, I have never experienced this with steady officers. Do you have militarized subsystems? Maybe AI flies civilian ships differnetly?

[Kanjejou]

Atlas MK2 is very nice as a cheap large balistic Large missile user but isnt very modifiable because it suffer from a couple of problem to me...

They have too low OP (50vents 25 IRF+25 for another mod +two big balistic and two big missiles so usually at least 68 if twin hellbore+twin for such a big ship, have very high base stats for its price and maintenance but almost no way to improve them effectively. meaning you end up with a very classic build, integrated targetin unit+reinforced bulkhead(except if you dont fear losing it) then maybe other stuff (since the ship get blasted quite often if there too many missiles frigates or fighters...

Militarized subsystem look to be made for it but bring nothing usefull for its price(i use it to get the fleet militarized ship bonuses) to it even with the offensiv or support improvement because of the OP cost...25+15OP that two much price when most good capital mode are 20-25op

Shield is too small so I want to make it a bit wider to protect the side a bit and avoid side shots...but once again your short in OP, both wide shield and front shield conversion are quite costly

Which is sad with this ship is the same than with most vanilla ship, too many gun slot not enough OP...

Usually my build is ITU+ReinBulk+Wide shield 2hellbore+2 squall(for pressure) or 2xLocust (for anti frigate/fighter/bomber) then usually two needler or railgun at the front and sometime 1heavy autocanon on each side(to get some extra support firing for the fleet, if not just extra vulcan) then the rest vulcan to not get missiled+bombed/fightered to death

another decent build is basic light autocanon(or twin ofr more pewpew) in every non large slot+balistic range finder make a funny ball of pewpew

[Daynen]

Oh, it should go without saying but I would never entrust the AI with atlas II's.  It's far too sluggish, far too fragile and requires far too much good decision making for the AI to succeed with it.  When I see enemy atlas II's I see free salvage because they're so easy to pop.  It's a flagship for the cultured man, not the AI pets.

[Kanjejou]

Oh, it should go without saying but I would never entrust the AI with atlas II's.  It's far too sluggish, far too fragile and requires far too much good decision making for the AI to succeed with it.  When I see enemy atlas II's I see free salvage because they're so easy to pop.  It's a flagship for the cultured man, not the AI pets.

With a lot put into shield (ITU+wide shield+hardened shield+fast shield) with a captain (with balistic mastery, guneery implant and improved shield, system expertise and missle mastery if you can) is better of course but it wcan work without one, put mostly very long range gun and/or gun with low flux/sec and decent range and its good to be put in AI hands just put some tanky frigate or destroyer around it and its will mostly never die and slap other quite hard, remember it reach capital range and thus can easily pressure/punish them with barely any help.

Atlas Mk2 is a ship that stranglely get more dangerous with mods ususally because a lot of mods create low OP long range  or low Flux/sec guns, the imperium mod for exemple make the Atlas a beast to be feared when facing pirate mid late game when they get their hands on blueprint for imperium guns they lack in dps but the low flux/s and long range or low dps get balanced byt he AAF, or with Syndrian fuel compagnie and  UAF also give tool to make it more deadly

[hidefreek]

The ship simply doesn't strong enough to confront current patch.
The ship can be modified with hullmods but other expensive upkeep ships have better stats.
And in late game the ship fast firing guns doesn't help much against military ship and quick assault frigates/destroyers.
***High-ends weapons and attack from the rear can reduced Atlus II health very quickly.
So you gain Atlas II during the early to mid game.
When you have steady economic and good colony.
Shift to better ship is better. (Also free Atlas II from pirate has d-mods with further decreased this ship usefulness)

But all hopes aren't lose.
Some mods have weapon of hullmods to help them very well.
Some mods support the civilian-grade, plus militarized S-mods make the ship better use as support ship for larger fight. [fit the gap, protect larger better ship formation]
***But I want the dev team to buff the ship.
Atlas II lacks versality and survivalist.
Makes build-in weapons for the ship is nice buff for it. Also fitting the ship lore...As remove the cargo slot and put the guns.
Here example from my opinion:
Gives Atlas II variants.
- AA variant: The ship installs build-in point defense weaponry around the ship.
- Squadron variant: The ship has fighting bays install from the start. (say no to converted hangar and reduced the percent amount of fighter ordinances)
- Assault variant: The ship has more armor and flux capacity. (Also reduced large ballistic ordinance)
- Vanilla variant: The weakest of the kinds but has the lowest upkeep (in both maintenance cost and fuel burning rate) and 2/3 of deployment cost.
******Also give the ship special build-in hullmod that can increase other hullmods effectiveness when install on the ship....this will likely make the ship better.

[Daynen]

Oh and I guess it's easy to overlook the fact that, costing only 24 DP, the atlas II also puts less of a strain on your fleet skills then other capitals, meaning you can bring more ships and not lose out on those bonuses so quickly.

[intrinsic_parity]

The reason I don't use atlas mk II is the campaign stats are bad because of civilian grade hull. Horrible sensor stats and horrible burn. Everyone in the system sees you, and you can't run from them because of your burn. Makes it pretty hard to use if every nearby ordo is coming for you as soon as you jump into the system and you have burn 6. I suppose you could run a bunch of tugs or something but that makes the sensor situation much worse and requires a ton more fuel. Just doesn't fit with exploration and is really painful in early/mid game.

If it didn't have civilian grade hull, I would be more interested. Militarized subsystems costs too much OP.

[Kanjejou]

If it didn't have civilian grade hull, I would be more interested. Militarized subsystems costs too much OP.

its a problem i have with every civi ship that can be decently upgunned, atlas get a pass from me thx to it being a capital thus it can have great range and and THE ALMIGHTY AUTO AMMO FEEDER!!!!

[Daynen]

I do tend to build in augmented burn drives to get it up to a reasonable 8 burn.  Also it's one of the biggest mods so that 40 OP saved is pretty huge.  Takes a lot of pain out of it.

[Princess_of_Evil]

You can also get the skill that gives +2 to civilian burn. Or tugs, honestly.