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[Vanshilar]

Let me start by saying testing a fleet against 5 Ordos doesn't have much particular practical purpose, since realistically the most you'll ever need to do is against double Ordos or possibly triple Ordos, at which point you've maxed out your fleet DP (maximizing your kill rate) and your XP bonus, unless you have a bunch of AI core officers. But it's fun to try to see how long you can go with your fleet.

This fleet is a modification of my flagship Onslaught / 3 Conquest / 2 Gryphon fleet that I found to be reliable for farming double Ordos with a high XP gain (~+450% XP bonus, usually takes around 4 minutes or 240 seconds or less per battle according to Detailed Combat Results). I basically used the same strategy and tactics, just with a loadout that's geared toward endurance rather than max DPS.

The star of the show is the Conquest. After 0.96a, I've found that a Squall/Locust pair does better than double Squalls, since the Locust will help finish off trash now that the Squall doesn't do as much to hull and armor, and since part of the reason for the Squall is to break up the enemy fleet and put them on the defensive, so the second Squall is a bit redundant anyway. Then it's the usual dual Mjolnir, dual HVD, and dual Harpoons. In this case, I set the missiles in their own groups for endurance; for max DPS (i.e. vs double Ordos) they would all be in the same group and linked, to make sure they're fired as quickly as possible.

I also stuck on some Tactical Lasers and a Graviton Beam. The Graviton Beam gives a bonus to anti-shield damage, of course. The Tactical Lasers are pretty inefficient at damage/flux, so they should be the first to go if you need some more OP (starting with the tail one), but I had some extra OP and flux so I figured I might as well. I don't know if Graviton Beam (for more anti-shield damage from all sources) or IR Autolance (to finish off ships faster) would be better, but I just stuck with Graviton Beam.

For the flagship Onslaught XIV, since it's for endurance, I put HVD's in the medium ballistic slots for max range, since staying farther away means I take less damage means I can last longer. Sadly, I lost most of my armor in the first few minutes due to the Novae anyway. Oh well. Note that I also chose to take more damage with my shield and rely on frequent venting, to make my armor/hull last longer as well. Usually, for double Ordos, it would be all 5 Heavy Needlers, or 3 Heavy Autocannon in the front and 2 HVD in the back, or all 5 HVD, which all seem to work well depending on what I'm focusing on -- the former is better for charging into big ships while the latter is better for picking off a bunch of weaker ships at long range, reducing the time it takes for me to switch from target to target.

The Hephaestus in the center large ballistic is for general-purpose killing, while the Proximity Charge Launchers are for big ships, or when I get in a jam and need some extra DPS, or for some anti-missile duty if I'm full on flux. Side Devastators are to take care of incoming from the sides, since I should be able to take care of incoming from the front via either shields or PCL.

The Gryphons are just the usual Squall/Harpoon/Breach/HVD Gryphon, they're basically there to grab objectives and chase down any ships that got away. I could probably use a different, better ship for it, I just haven't bothered to try other ships. That's where this fleet could probably improve.

The video can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1tLbLe8iUY

The 5 Ordos total 2130 DP. It pretty much follows with my Ordos fleet statistics thus far (on average, an Ordos fleet will have 1 Radiant and 1 Nova) so it should be pretty representative.

It wasn't the best run, I took a lot of damage early on which I usually don't, so I had to stay farther away than I usually do, decreasing my DPS. Also, an Apex got away near the end because the Conquest was trying to flank (since it's broadside AI) and wound up behind the Apex, which is sort of dumb since I want the Conquest to block it, not go around it. But no way to tell broadside AI to do that, oh well. So that lengthened the run and exposed my left flank, which made the run take longer. But this overall shows how it can be done. Having a max DPS loadout against double Ordos is pretty much the same, except I don't bother to deploy the 4th Conquest (I only use 3 Conquests for more XP bonus), and it goes much faster.

[CapnHector]

Very cool, and glad to see this is becoming a thing

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

This makes me want to actually pilot a ship

[Grievous69]

Think the Onslaught would be even better by swapping the HAG for Mjolnir but that messes with the flux a little bit so you'd have to make a sacrifice elsewhere.

Buuut why did you record your game with a cam? There is free capturing software and you can use Nvidia Shadowplay if you have their graphics card. Not only does it make the footage better looking, I bet it's also easier having it all saved immediately to your PC.

[Thaago]

I'm currently using central Mjolnir on my player onslaught for the exact reasons Grievous mentioned - also switched from HAG. The HAG was doing great vs all normal enemies, but I found this to be better vs ordos. Side effect of very high accuracy vs frigates was surprisingly welcome! I did need to tweak other weapons for flux purposes (that gun and S mod expanded magazines for the TPCs are a decent chunk of increased flux).

[Edit] In terms of long range onslaught potential, I really like S mod expanded magazines! My AI wingman onslaught has a forward cluster of HVDs and a Mauler to match ranged with them (wait, are TPCs technically ballistic mounts for ballistic mastery? I don't think so but realized that as built ins I don't actually know!). Between the two, 750 sustained dps, 2500 burst dps with 15k damage 'banked'.

For comparison, a TPC (IF the shots are hitting, which they may not vs small targets. Alternating weapon group on autofire really helps with that) has BETTER flux efficiency vs shields than an HVD. And is far superior vs armor and hull too.

For your loadout, the light needlers + ballistic rangefinder hurts my soul in terms of OP expenditure for offensive gain... it does somewhat maximize forward kinetic power, though if that is the goal then switching to a Mjolnir will also help a lot!

[Jang]

Do you ever have trouble capping/holding objectives with no frigates? I'm wondering how you deal with the map with objectives in each corner, where you may have to capture an enemy-side comm relay to deploy everything

[Vanshilar]

Very cool, and glad to see this is becoming a thing

Yeah it'll be interesting to see how the other ships perform since we have very different approaches to fleet design and battle strategy.

Although I likely won't try that many 5 Ordos runs, since I look more at fast Ordos farming fleets, but the Conquest is still the best I've tried thus far, so I thought I'd take it for a spin and see how it'd do.

This makes me want to actually pilot a ship

Yeah I still feel player piloting the flagship is still a better choice, since the player can overcome deficiencies in the AI (i.e. the player's ship is the only one not limited by the AI). Also it's just fun to burn drive in while spamming PCL and singing "Wrecking Ball".

Buuut why did you record your game with a cam? There is free capturing software and you can use Nvidia Shadowplay if you have their graphics card. Not only does it make the footage better looking, I bet it's also easier having it all saved immediately to your PC.

Wish I could, but I'm using a desktop that's over a decade old. The desktop is so old that I couldn't even use the Fast Engine Rendering mod. I've tried screen capture software before but they all slow down the game to the point where it becomes a slideshow. So until I buy a new desktop this will have to do. That's why I mostly screenshot but not video record, it's a pain to set up the camera so that it lines up with the computer monitor. Sigh.

Given that the video is over 28 minutes long and is 30 frames per second, I think that means I should be expecting uh around 50 thousand pipe bombs in the mail.

I'm currently using central Mjolnir on my player onslaught for the exact reasons Grievous mentioned - also switched from HAG. The HAG was doing great vs all normal enemies, but I found this to be better vs ordos. Side effect of very high accuracy vs frigates was surprisingly welcome! I did need to tweak other weapons for flux purposes (that gun and S mod expanded magazines for the TPCs are a decent chunk of increased flux).

Well the HAG and the Mjolnir have pretty much the same hit rate, at least with elite Ballistic Mastery (from side by side testing, the Mjolnir currently stands at 862/1364 = 63.2% while the HAG stands at 2284/3661 = 62.4%, so basically within margin of error of testing). So it comes down to the Mjolnir's higher DPS versus the HAG's better flux efficiency. Against armor, the HAG is both faster (higher DPS) and more flux efficient than the Mjolnir. Against Ordos hull, the Mjolnir will on average do about 18% more DPS, but the HAG is 15% more efficient (HAG only needs 85% of the flux to do the same amount of damage to hull). For me, I tried the Mjolnir before, but I wasn't good at getting the "feel" of how quickly the flux went up with it, which was too fast and made me flux out. That's bad for me in the flagship because enemy ships will then start launching a bunch of missiles at me when I'm at high flux; I rely on venting frequently to keep my flux down. So HAG's better efficiency made more sense. If I get better at piloting though I may use the Mjolnir.

For the AI I'd recommend the Mjolnir. As the player though I'll manually turn off the HAG when I'm hitting shields, then turn it back on against armor/hull, to be more flux efficient. (Note that my flagship Onslaught XIV is severely overfluxed.) So I could afford to specialized in anti-armor/hull since I'm manually controlling weapons, while Mjolnir is a more generalist weapon.

[Edit] In terms of long range onslaught potential, I really like S mod expanded magazines!

Yeah s-mod Expanded Magazines for TPC is definitely a good choice. Looking at the results and applying a simplistic *1.5 to the TPC's total damage, that would mean around 8% more overall DPS from the flagship which is definitely good. For this run I was using Heavy Armor though as my 3rd s-mod, for endurance. For double Ordos where I'm not as concerned about endurance, I've been toying with using something else instead of Heavy Armor as the 3rd s-mod, or dropping Heavy Armor entirely. So s-mod Expanded Magazines would definitely be a good choice. (It's considered energy by the way.)

For your loadout, the light needlers + ballistic rangefinder hurts my soul in terms of OP expenditure for offensive gain... it does somewhat maximize forward kinetic power, though if that is the goal then switching to a Mjolnir will also help a lot!

Yeah, they're expensive in OP (due to Ballistic Rangefinder) but they're efficient in damage/flux. They're also somewhat a holdover from my regular farming loadout, where I use Heavy Needlers or some Heavy Autocannons, thus Ballistic Rangefinder is a lot more worthwhile in that case. I find Ballistic Rangefinder can be surprisingly useful in general; they were worthwhile even on the Eradicator for AI use since, even though they only gave 100 base range to the small ballistics, that meant the AI could hit from that much farther away instead of closing in and it dropped the damage the fleet took by around 1/4 or something, so more of the flux went toward killing the enemy, making the ship as a whole more efficient. In this particular case I was going for a long range build so they were useful for that.

Do you ever have trouble capping/holding objectives with no frigates? I'm wondering how you deal with the map with objectives in each corner, where you may have to capture an enemy-side comm relay to deploy everything

It means that yes the enemy will capture the objectives first, but my cruiser will capture it back afterward. The enemy fleet is pretty predictable; it sends a frigate (or sometimes a destroyer) in a straight line towards the objectives, so I just need to make sure I have a bigger ship in the way to kill that ship before it reaches the objective. I then gradually move my fleet forward toward the top of the map where they spawn, making sure that no ships get past my fleet. So once I capture the objective, they won't take it back.

[Draba]

Think the Onslaught would be even better by swapping the HAG for Mjolnir but that messes with the flux a little bit so you'd have to make a sacrifice elsewhere.

I'm currently using central Mjolnir on my player onslaught for the exact reasons Grievous mentioned - also switched from HAG. The HAG was doing great vs all normal enemies, but I found this to be better vs ordos. Side effect of very high accuracy vs frigates was surprisingly welcome! I did need to tweak other weapons for flux purposes (that gun and S mod expanded magazines for the TPCs are a decent chunk of increased flux).

In my experience Mjolnir messes with AI TPC's flux too much, railguns+HAG seems much better there.
Same under manual control, alternating between TPC+kinetic and TPC+HE feels stronger. Always building in armored mounts and magazines on Onslaught, both increase flux use and awesomeness.

[Edit] In terms of long range onslaught potential, I really like S mod expanded magazines! My AI wingman onslaught has a forward cluster of HVDs and a Mauler to match ranged with them (wait, are TPCs technically ballistic mounts for ballistic mastery? I don't think so but realized that as built ins I don't actually know!). Between the two, 750 sustained dps, 2500 burst dps with 15k damage 'banked'.
...
For your loadout, the light needlers + ballistic rangefinder hurts my soul in terms of OP expenditure for offensive gain... it does somewhat maximize forward kinetic power, though if that is the goal then switching to a Mjolnir will also help a lot!

Not a fan of needlers but on Onslaught/Dominator railguns+rangefinder is much better than HVD IMO.
3 of them barely costs more, lower flux use, higher DPS, still decent hit strength, fast turning and fast projectiles to keep frigates in check.
Only 900 range but with ballistic mastery it's still almost the same as TPC (TPC counts as energy for bonuses).
Can also go all out and and get ~5 railguns in front.

[Vanshilar]

Not a fan of needlers but on Onslaught/Dominator railguns+rangefinder is much better than HVD IMO.
3 of them barely costs more, lower flux use, higher DPS, still decent hit strength, fast turning and fast projectiles to keep frigates in check.
Only 900 range but with ballistic mastery it's still almost the same as TPC (TPC counts as energy for bonuses).
Can also go all out and and get ~5 railguns in front.

Yeah I've sort of vacillated between Light Needlers and Railguns. Light Needlers have a bit better flux efficiency, but Railguns do more anti-hull damage. It took a lot of testing but I eventually ended up with Light Needlers, since the burst means that they tend to hit shields more often which is their primarily goal.

For the mediums on my flagship Onslaught I've been using 3 HACs in front and 2 HVDs in the middle, to range-match. Since I have Ballistic Rangefinder, the HACs have 900 range, matching the Light Needlers and Hephaestus, and since the HVDs are set further back, their range ends up lining up with the HACs. The HACs and HVDs have pretty similar damage-to-flux ratio (HACs are more flux efficient out-of-the-box, but HVDs do quite a bit more damage to hull), so they end up being about the same in this context. Thus my flagship Onslaught's weapons are currently 3 HAC, 2 HVD, 6 Light Needlers, 3 Hephaestus, 4 Proximity Charge Launchers, and of course the two TPCs with Expanded Magazines, supported by lots and lots of venting. That leads to a massive wrecking ball when used right though.

[CapnHector]

Oh, this thread reminded me, 5 Conquests vs 5 Ordos still is an unsolved puzzle to me despite trying the flanking strategy like you suggested. The problem is the ships are not agile enough to not get flanked themselves so the "V" formation does not hold. I can't employ the Odyssey strategy of free roaming because they are not agile enough for that either. Also they just fold if focused by Assault Radiants despite Hardened, S-modded Stabilized, Extended, Field Modulated shields with 20 caps.

I think the Conquest really does best in a mixed fleet where something else is tanking, or distracting. That reminds me to try to put distraction fighters on it though.

Still, even though it's obviously very powerful though fragile, even with the most destructive loadout I can imagine (Linked 2x Locust 2x Breach, 2x Mjolnir, 2x HVD) it just doesn't feel as powerful as the LDAC spam 3x Heph 6 Ordo Onslaught under AI control.

I don't really know if there's much reason to use non-LDAC kinetics on Onslaught if you're not wasting slots on PD, since those offer unparalleled damage/op and damage/flux if you have the open slots for them. Also theoretically they should "killbox" with the 100 shorter range than HAG. Well, maybe accuracy at range if you're focusing ships with allies, then longer range accurate guns are better as you do in the video.

Maybe I just need more practice with the strategy though. The problem is if the "V" is too wide ships get isolated and die but if too narrow the enemies go around the formation. It's hard to say why it is but maybe because there isn't the extremely deadly playership in the middle, the stream of Remnants piles up and starts to flank unlike your video, if it's not my lack of practice with this formation.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

I don't see how Conquest can work against five Ordo given how much of its firepower is locked in missiles which will simply run out before that(without a flagship)

Have you tried Hydras to clear out the frigate spam?

[CapnHector]

No - because Hydras run out even faster than Locusts or Squalls. I know from trying a 4x Hydra Pegasus that they are probably the best missile available for clearing small ships though, but only for 1 Ordo.

If only Cyclone could work that would be great because those can last 5 Ordos, but it just seems like a non-starter with the AI.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

Actually now that I think about it, if you're skipping Squalls then I wonder if Mjolnirs are the best choice since that leaves you only with HVDs for kinetics and these aren't even all that efficient. Maybe Mark IX/Mauler would be better, or Gauss if you're still S-modding ATG.