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[CapnHector]

Good news, everyone! Using trusty Luddic Path technology, I have managed to build a fleet of Venture (LP)s that can take out a double Ordo under AI control and without officers or a playership. Also, it has 18626 cargo capacity, 9520 crew capacity and -580 survey requirements, which is handy if you need to survey a planet with 1200% hazard ratio or more. Praise Ludd.

It took a couple of days worth of research. I posted the previous research on kinetics and hullmods here. I'll continue here with the results from testing missiles. (Update: also tested Officers, see page 2)

First, though, the battle report.

The ship. This wonderful ship has everything: it has PCLs, it has Reapers, and it can charge and deliver them right to the enemy's face. What more do you want? I am making this ship my new forum avatar.

The character.

[close]

The fleet.

The D-modded ships have random D-mods that are not Compromised Armor, Compromised Hull or Structural Damage. This is because those make the ship significantly worse, while others don't matter that much. This was achieved by using Reinforced Bulkheads to prevent Structural Damage and just restoring the ship if it gets Compromised Armor or Compromised Hull, which is not terribly expensive.

[close]

Battle report and combat results

I am using 10x combat speed which causes the ships to glow like Ludd's holy angels due to damage effects not fading out. AI is set to Reckless in doctrine.

These abominations have no idea what's coming.






Derelict Operations lets us deploy 20 Ventures to begin with.


We start by doing the reasonable thing and hide in the corner.


Go go go!


When the enemy is here, we remove the Defend order.


From there on, it's downhill for the Remnants (see top left corner)


The battle plan is: death squads of Ventures roam the battlefield, eliminating the Remnants by defeat in detail.


Charging the enemy.


Apices come out, but can they face the might of Ludd's Ventures? (No)


The enemy is driven into a corner.


The secret meaning of the Eliminate command is "ignore other ships than", so we use it to corral lost sheep.


The Radiants join in, but can they stand against Venture (LP)? (No)


This is how you fight a Radiant.



The Radiants are forced on the defensive and chased around the map.



In the end, there is nowhere to hide.

[close]

Let me just reiterate, I love this ship. Aggression is so much more fun than defending.

[CapnHector]

The missile tests. I used fleets with only the missiles swapped out. Each fleet had 4 x groups of 5 Ventures (LP) with random D-mods that were not Compromised Armor or Compromised Hull or Structural Damage. It was all obtained in normal play by rerolling (Restoring) ships that got any of those. Mostly painless. Ships with 3OP missiles had built-in Heavy Armor while ships with 2OP missiles had built in Reinforced Bulkheads. No orders were given, all ships under Reckless AI.

Example:

Spoiler

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Test results vs. 10 Ordos, Reaper vs. Hammer vs. Sabot vs. Harpoon:

Spoiler

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Note Hammer-2 was incorrectly configured to have Reapers. All others had the weapon listed. This lead me to conclude Reaper is the best of these.

Next was Breach vs. Breach (Linked with IRAL) vs. Reaper vs. Hammer. However, this fleet was unable to win even vs. a single Ordo despite using orders and three attempts. Here is the output from a lost combat. In examining the results the Breaches were doing only something like 7k damage even from the best exemplar:

Spoiler

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Next was Reaper vs Hammer vs Swarmer vs Atropos. However, I was again unable to win vs Ordos reliably. It turned out I was only winning about 1/3 of the time so reporting results would be unreliable.

[Doctorhealsgood]

The orion device is so fun.

[Void Ganymede]

If the Path mastered logistics and surveying like this, why are they still such dicks??

I had the impression simulating at high speed messed with AI decision making. Do these experiments replicate at 1x?

[CapnHector]

If the Path mastered logistics and surveying like this, why are they still such dicks??

Path will trade with you despite -100 relations, sell you all the best ships in the game, provide you with infinite money if you sell supplies to Chalcedon, and you call them jerks because the Path won't let you enslave millions of humans to an AI for +1 production and +10% accessibility.

I had the impression simulating at high speed messed with AI decision making. Do these experiments replicate at 1x?

Seriously? Mother of mercy. I am not doing these experiments at 1x speed. The price of knowledge is too high.

Upon testing, the fleet still works for fighting double Ordos at 1x speed, potentially better since the "herd the lost sheep" aspect is strong here and the way to lose with this fleet is let them chase frigates, and you can now do it without Starcraft level reflexes. The key is locally outnumbering the enemy. This is based on 1 fight, because it is sooooo slow.

Winning double Ordos is not guaranteed though, I've learned. Against the fleet I posted in the OP it is reliable but this fleet specifically does badly vs. the "fast" Ordos with Novas and Brilliants that can out-aggress you.

Edit: to see whether it might be to do with the speed multiple (or even more nefariously if the DCR mod does not work correctly at a high speed multiple, which I didn't think of!), here is some output from another Double Ordo fight, this time at 1x speed. The combat sure looks more prosaic this way.



Here is the DCR output:



By comparison here is the DCR output of one ship from a 10x speed fight:


So it appears that there is an issue with calculating the IR Autolance damage in DCR at higher speed multiples. However, the other weapons seem to be fine, since the damage is very similar. Also, "Unknown High Explosive" appears to resolve correctly to PCL now. I don't think this necessarily affects the results that were used to find this build dramatically, since every group had the IR Autolance so the incorrect calculation should have affected them similarly.

[SCC]

Double speed is identical to regular speed, if your computer can get enough frames per second (I don't remember what value that was in particular, though).

[CapnHector]

Is there some kind of documentation of the issues here? I was unable to find it searching in a variety of ways.

[CapnHector]

I have an update on this fleet. For anyone interested, here are results from 5 and 10 double Ordo fights. Unfortunately the 10 double Ordo fight pool is polluted by 1) my taking out a Pirate station to raid for Mule (P) blueprints (I think that ship can also make an Ordo farming fleet but you need 90 story points for it) and 2) my own Star Fortress participating in one of the fights. However, results for the Ventures are similar. This is at 10 x speed, so the IRAL damage figure is inflated by something like 30-40x, but the others are likely reliable based on what I posted earlier (it is probably the case that beam damage is calculated somehow based on fight time that it also displays incorrectly).

I am getting around 2.5 million XP per fight, so it is going to take a while to build that Mule (P) smuggling and Ordo farming fleet, but it is nice because the fights are fast and aggressive and happen under AI control.

5 Ordo report


Best and worst ships:



A couple of interesting things can be seen from this.

1) Sarissa is by far stronger as a weapon than the double LDAC. Sarissa is approximately as good as the two PCLs.
2) The Missile Autoloader may seem bad, since S-modded it eats one S-mod and you get a 10 second refire delay, and non-S-modded it is 20 OP. However, note that the Reapers in fact were about as damaging as 2x PCL or CH + Sarissa. So the Missile Autoloader is definitely worth its OP on this ship, it deals damage equal to some of the best combos for the same OP. I think we can objectively say it is a good fit on a Venture even if opinions on how good it is on other ships vary.

10 (or 9, because of pirate station) double Ordo results:




Edit: Pirate ships? What was I thinking. I apologize and repent of my temporary lapse of faith.


(okay, we didn't win - however, apparently this loss generates 337 million bonus XP? it seems like this loss not only produces martyrs but also greatly contributes to the cause.)

[BaBosa]

This is really cool stuff. I would have never thought that ventures could be an end game fleet, especially without large missile spam.
Are you gonna try Colossus as well now?
Have you tried a mono Falcon P fleet? Player controlled works really well and I've been curious if the proxie change made them be able to work well enough.

[CapnHector]

This is really cool stuff. I would have never thought that ventures could be an end game fleet, especially without large missile spam.
Are you gonna try Colossus as well now?
Have you tried a mono Falcon P fleet? Player controlled works really well and I've been curious if the proxie change made them be able to work well enough.

Venture (LP) is really cool. It is an excellent ship and fun. I think I will actually try the Colossus (LP) next. This venerable machine of holy war deserves its moment in the sun. I have been unable to make it work before, but maybe I have gotten better, or maybe the S-mod and CH changes will help it?

The Mule build I was thinking of is SO + Sarissa + PCL + 2 x LDAC. A few of those can take out a Radiant in the sim. That'll have to wait though.

It is pretty easy for me to try new ships right now, because I have functionally infinite money, story points (after the sacrifice of the brave Colossus fleet I am making 10 per fight) and can produce hulls worth a little short of one million credits per month at my colonies. So I gave the Falcon (P) a quick whirl with a fleet like this.

Falcon (P) fleet and build

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I was expecting it to be ludicrously strong, since it is for the player and the AI can now use the PCL, and it seems so much better on paper and in the sim a few of these will annihilate Radiants. However, in fleet combat it turns out this fleet can take out one Ordo but not without losses and not two. You can really tell that the ship is fragile, one ship costs twice as much to deploy as a Venture (admittedly I don't have the DO bonus on these) and can take much less punishment than one. I actually much prefer the Venture (LP) fleet. This would probably be much better if you got the full Derelict Operations bonus on it though, since then the cost would come down to 13 rather than 20 per ship. This might be the ship that benefits the most from it, since literally all of its combat power is in the missiles and D-mods don't really affect them.

[TaLaR]

Falcon(P) costs same 20DP as Eagle, which is much stronger in a duel. Imo, it's good to include a few Falcon(P)s in a 10-speed fleet. But when the free built-in ADF doesn't matter, it isn't all that remarkable.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

I'd definitely put some kinetics on these Falcons. HACs or maybe Heavy Needlers.

[CapnHector]

For a moment there I was really confused, then I remembered you can mount non-missiles on the Falcon (P) too. Doesn't seem like a great idea though, the ship doesn't have the endurance to brawl and also the PCL has 250 anti-shield DPS already without using flux and with longer range unless you also put in ITU. The really smart move would be putting Officers with missile spec on these since that would increase damage output by more than 50%. Would still be fragile though.

Edit: also you could try a non-Reckless AI setting too I think, Reckless might not be optimal for this ship and, for clarity, I had the doctrine on Reckless and didn't even consider it. Still, no proof Reckless isn't optimal, so that's up for experimentation

[CapnHector]

By Ludd's grace, I have done it. I have created a Colossus Mk. II Ordo hunting fleet! Praise be.

The build.

The fleet.

[close]

We fight without a playership, with a Reckless doctrine.

Battle report and DCR output.

We encounter a pack of AI monstrosities, with a Drone Battleship at its head.


Our battle plan may not be particularly elegant, but it is efficient.



Charge, warriors of Ludd!


This is the end of the Radiant.


The Nova is subsequently quickly hammered down, leaving us in control of the battlespace.


After that, it is a matter of herding the sheep again. Unlike with Ventures, with Colossus Mk. II you must really pay attention to having the numbers and squeezing every drop out of the ship before it is inevitably destroyed or runs out of PPT or Hammers. They are even more prone to chasing frigates and must be controlled relatively tightly, making this very stressful.



This is how you take out an Apex.


The enemy is destroyed.


At some cost, but it was the work of righteousness. Those martyred here will have their reward.

[close]

This was the result of nonsystematic experimentation, since there are not really a lot of options on this ship and the key consideration is choice of S-Mods. What I was missing earlier - and in earlier releases, before I started building these weird fleets - is just how good Reinforced Bulkheads is. 40% more HP makes a big difference. For example, I was unable to win vs any Ordos at all with Militarized Subsystems or Converted Hangar S-modded in instead, which I was initially going for.

Can't recommend this ship in particular though unless for aesthetics; the Venture is even better for hauling, this fleet only has 9879 cargo space. Also, I was able to beat other Ordos with it, but not all; even strong single Ordos will simply be able to bring too many ships and eventually the Colossi will die. Maybe if I had all the D-mods with similar reroll policy to Venture (LP) for more numerical superiority.

[BaBosa]

This is really cool stuff. I would have never thought that ventures could be an end game fleet, especially without large missile spam.
Are you gonna try Colossus as well now?
Have you tried a mono Falcon P fleet? Player controlled works really well and I've been curious if the proxie change made them be able to work well enough.

Venture (LP) is really cool. It is an excellent ship and fun. I think I will actually try the Colossus (LP) next. This venerable machine of holy war deserves its moment in the sun. I have been unable to make it work before, but maybe I have gotten better, or maybe the S-mod and CH changes will help it?

The Mule build I was thinking of is SO + Sarissa + PCL + 2 x LDAC. A few of those can take out a Radiant in the sim. That'll have to wait though.

It is pretty easy for me to try new ships right now, because I have functionally infinite money, story points (after the sacrifice of the brave Colossus fleet I am making 10 per fight) and can produce hulls worth a little short of one million credits per month at my colonies. So I gave the Falcon (P) a quick whirl with a fleet like this.

Falcon (P) fleet and build

[close]

I was expecting it to be ludicrously strong, since it is for the player and the AI can now use the PCL, and it seems so much better on paper and in the sim a few of these will annihilate Radiants. However, in fleet combat it turns out this fleet can take out one Ordo but not without losses and not two. You can really tell that the ship is fragile, one ship costs twice as much to deploy as a Venture (admittedly I don't have the DO bonus on these) and can take much less punishment than one. I actually much prefer the Venture (LP) fleet. This would probably be much better if you got the full Derelict Operations bonus on it though, since then the cost would come down to 13 rather than 20 per ship. This might be the ship that benefits the most from it, since literally all of its combat power is in the missiles and D-mods don't really affect them.

Missile expertise must really make a difference. Elite field modulation is also really helpful for the 15% hard flux dissipation since there's no weapon flux. Pity we can only have 11 officers. Though with DO you'd get 23 Falcons so half officered might make a big difference. Doesn't feel like it'd be much better than LP venture even then though which is crazy. I guess the extra speed on the venture fills its main weakness.
How about 1 sabot pod with the PCLs on Falcon P? Maybe linked with the PCLs if the AI is still too hesitant with sabots.

The mule build sounds like it'll work. Seems like the fixed PCLs, LDACs and new Sarissas are key to these close range builds.

Falcon(P) costs same 20DP as Eagle, which is much stronger in a duel. Imo, it's good to include a few Falcon(P)s in a 10-speed fleet. But when the free built-in ADF doesn't matter, it isn't all that remarkable.

Do you mean player controlled or AI? Falcon P is one of those ships where it is so much stronger for players. But with the recent PCL change, they're still really powerful with missile expertise since then it's like 6.6 flux free HE heavy blasters.