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[CapnHector]

Impressive.

There's something cool about the Astral, it looks like some sort of a space cathedral.

The Remnants folded under the weight of all the waypoints! But jokes aside, your Ordo was light on Apexes but heavy on Novas. Is that good or bad for Astrals? Personally I find such composition more difficult.

And last question. I noticed Wolfs doing some serious work behind the lines. Isn't it against the 5 ship rule? Would the battle be much more difficult with the Wolfs just capping objectives and not participating in the fight?

Yeah the Ordos are deliberately selected (but naturally found, not generated). I wanted specifically to select for fewer Apexes because killing those takes time. However I may have thrown out the baby with the bathwater when doing so in retrospect because I ended up with an incredible amount of Scintillas. And Astrals can't chase those down. That leads to the Wolfs, which are needed to kill backline stragglers so they don't drag down killing speed.

Edit to add: and in response to your actual question Brilliants and Novas are way more dangerous for the Astrals than Apexes, but also die faster. So easier when you are on a timer...

The wolves actually did crazy well by DCR, killing 12x their own DP. But they preyed on weakened Scintillas that had expended their fighters against the Astrals. Don't be fooled, they will die very easily if fighting anything else.

So in a way there are 2 rule violations, one is the Ordos are not just whatever I found but ones selected to be killable fast (except didn't think about Scintilla) and one is the finisher wolves keeping the backline clean. But it's also a different genre than the other videos which all feature retreats to extend the ships' PPT timer. If the Astral had no AI bugs and could retreat it could do all that stuff easily if you look at how strong it is, so I don't think the concessions really matter that much although I was actually originally pretty disappointed to have to make such. Still feels very cool.

If we did have infinite PPT (or only a reasonable number of enemies) then not using the Wolfs would in fact be stronger btw, because the weaker Scintillas would make dangerous ships spawn slower and give the Astrals' replacement rate time to recover.

Good job, gives me a couple ideas for my Odyssey heavy fleet.

I'm currently lacking heavy armor hullbreaking abilities due to them using two AutoPulse Lasers. I have a single breech, but that's all I can spare, swapping out the locust, or gazers drops shield damage too much for such a short ranged ship. Currently the fighters are mining pods and xyphos, and xyphos are a hard requirement.
I think with building in hullmods I can replace the mining pods on them. After testing, would you recommend flash or warthogs?

I'm actually not 100% sure about how well Flashes work with an Odyssey since the ship will probably be quite fast compared to its bombers. But Flashes are generally extremely good anti armor. It might take some micro to be able to burst things down with just one wing though. So this is actually probably going to take some experimentation to find out what is best for Odyssey! IIRC that ship can also mount one PCL to converge with its main guns so that is actually one way to add both defense and anti armor power.

Here's some more stuff about Autopulse Odyssey because it sounded interesting. I'll spoiler it because it gets kind of off topic and big picture. The short of it is, testing it in the sim vs 2x Radiant I think it actually wants a Sarissa. Just preliminary testing though it usually takes me days to fully optimize builds.

Spoiler

Testing 2x Autopulse Odyssey vs sim Radiant it does a little less shield damage with a Flash than we'd want (just by feel), although the HE damage actually works great, but there's an issue where when it fights 2 Radiants, what happens is the Flash wing gets left behind when the Odyssey flees and is quickly destroyed and takes a long time to replace. But building it like this

You get fighters that follow you and are replaced quickly but you also get serious armor cracking power from the PCLs and also Breach if you link it with APL. In fact it won the first time I pit it vs 2 sim Radiants although subsequent times it got TL sniped to death due to lowering its shields so that needs working around. Note that build is just a quick draft though for example in reality you'd want S-mod more things, add EMR, reconsider hullmods, probably S-mod ATG.

[close]

[eert5rty7u8i9i7u6yrewqdef]

I'm actually not 100% sure about how well Flashes work with an Odyssey since the ship will probably be quite fast compared to its bombers. But Flashes are generally extremely good anti armor. It might take some micro to be able to burst things down with just one wing though. So this is actually probably going to take some experimentation to find out what is best for Odyssey! IIRC that ship can also mount one PCL to converge with its main guns so that is actually one way to add both defense and anti armor power.

Here's some more stuff about Autopulse Odyssey because it sounded interesting. I'll spoiler it because it gets kind of off topic and big picture. The short of it is, testing it in the sim vs 2x Radiant I think it actually wants a Sarissa. Just preliminary testing though it usually takes me days to fully optimize builds.

Spoiler

Testing 2x Autopulse Odyssey vs sim Radiant it does a little less shield damage with a Flash than we'd want (just by feel), although the HE damage actually works great, but there's an issue where when it fights 2 Radiants, what happens is the Flash wing gets left behind when the Odyssey flees and is quickly destroyed and takes a long time to replace. But building it like this

You get fighters that follow you and are replaced quickly but you also get serious armor cracking power from the PCLs and also Breach if you link it with APL. In fact it won the first time I pit it vs 2 sim Radiants although subsequent times it got TL sniped to death due to lowering its shields so that needs working around. Note that build is just a quick draft though for example in reality you'd want S-mod more things, add EMR, reconsider hullmods, probably S-mod ATG.

[close]

Replacing Xyphos was the answer, turns out at baseline (no hullmods no skills) two mining pod wings were better than one Xyphos and one mining pod wing. Against a sim Onslaught there's not much of a difference between two mining pods and one mining pod with one flash. But against everything else, it comically exceeded old builds. There's now nothing in the sim at 45 DP that a baseline Odyssey can't handle without issue. Also putting locusts and gazers in a control group alongside the Autopulse lasers and a mining laser greatly improved its damage output.
I may add a Sarissa when it has three built in hullmods, but for now it's good enough to go grind story points. I started the build with PCLs but quickly found they didn't have enough range, and I wasn't breaking through the Onslaughts flux pool, which is why I went with gazers.

[Dri]

All I'm seeing is 2 turreted Cyclone Reaper Launchers with Expanded Missile Racks. The real MVPs.

The fighters are just there to insure the Reapers get through, hah

[CapnHector]

All I'm seeing is 2 turreted Cyclone Reaper Launchers with Expanded Missile Racks. The real MVPs.

The fighters are just there to insure the Reapers get through, hah

Hey, those Reapers only dealt 30-45% of the ship's and its fighters' total damage yeah I leaned into them really hard.

That actually makes me think maybe Legion XIV can do this too. Maybe there is another 5 ships 5 Ordos challenge that should be done... I'm just worried about whether armor can last. Should see about that. It's probably going to be much harder without 0.6 360 shields and with only 2/3rd of the wings I should think though.

[Genir]

That actually makes me think maybe Legion XIV can do this too. Maybe there is another 5 ships 5 Ordos challenge that should be done...

I think you should try. There's an enormous improvement potential in seemingly small tweaks, as evident by your Astral project. I experienced it myself with 4 Executor fleet - version that is challenged by a double Ordo isn't that much different from setup that handles a fat 5xOrdo.

[Vanshilar]

Messing around with bombers I do think that including 1 Flash wing might in fact have potential.

One thing I'll note is that Flash are really good at "pushing" the enemy fleet back. The AI is overly concerned about the Proximity Charges even if they're not going to hit the ship or even if the ship can easily absorb them via shields. So I'll often see my ships back up whenever the enemy launches a Flash wave, even if they can easily absorb it via shields.

So the Flashes can be useful not just for their damage potential but also for how they modify enemy AI behavior, i.e. getting them to back off and not swarm if they get too close. I find Annihilators are also pretty good for that.

The drawback is that it also affects your own fleet ship AI. As far as I can tell, the AI does not consider a missile's trajectory, only its current location, when deciding whether or not it's a threat. In other words, it won't say "that missile is nearby but going the other way so I don't need to worry about it". So when there are Flashes nearby, it tends to mess up how they prioritize shields. Attached is a screenshot of a Conquest deciding that since my PCL spam is too close, it'd rather put its shields up toward me, instead of the Nova that's currently firing everything they got at it, even though my PCL spam is heading towards the Nova and not the Conquest. So it can be a bit of a double-edged sword.

That actually makes me think maybe Legion XIV can do this too.

Funny enough, in 0.95.1a, my testing was that the Legion XIV were actually fairly close to the Conquest in terms of how quickly it can dispatch double Ordos. (I just never tested it enough to post the results, since I was still going through the process of trying out different fighters when the update hit.) So it may be a possibility.

[Jang]

Yeah, part of the reason I settled on Flash bombers eventually was the outsized effect they had on enemy aggression with a relatively low number of wings.

Their ability to inflict friendly fire and negatively impact friendly ship's shield behavior is a consideration, but I found that to be a non-issue in real battles. My Moras didn't really suffer if they shielded the wrong way for a few moments or took a couple half-powered PCLs to the engine, my Herons were always far enough away to avoid any damage, and even my Glimmers never seemed to die or overload from friendly bombs while in the action. I won't discount the idea that less specialized fleet comps may have more issues with PCL friendly fire, but the strength of PCLs/Flashes should outweigh any of these drawbacks in practice

[crvt]

On the topic of questionable carrier AI...
I tried to test various Heron builds, with the main idea being that it is a carrier that can be faster than Remnant cruisers and capitals.

For the tests, I've been running 3 Herons, all with cautious officers, against a single unofficered Radiant in a sim.

The following would happen:

• One of the Herons, the one closest to frontal Autopulse mounts of a Radiant at the current time, would insist on staying within Autopulse range, regardless of which weapons the Heron had (even if there were none at all). It would maybe consider retreating when about to get overloaded, but even that is not a given. Taking manual control of the ship and disengaging, or giving it a rally point on the opposite side of the map, the ship can retreat very easily even if the Radiant uses system charges to chase after it, so staying within range must be on purpose.
• The other Herons maintain distance properly. Unfortunately, if they have weapons, that also makes them not use their weapons even when presented with completely undefended sides.

My expectation was that a cautious Heron with 0 weapons mounted would stay...either on the max engagement range of fighters, or, at least, out of enemy range.
On another note, the flying-in-front-of-a-Radiant behavior also applies when a Heron is given a single MRM Resonator - it(the one ship in front of the Radiant) is not trying to maintain long range, it is usually at around 1200 instead of 2500.

From what I saw, if you order the carrier that is currently being stupid to move away from the Radiant, other Herons will decide to close in, then, once one of them gets targeted by the Radiant, the one not being targeted will maintain distance. If the rally on the original Heron is canceled, it will maintain distance.

To sum up:
- One ship decides to draw fire on itself despite being faster and having longer range than the enemy. Is this some deliberate tactic to soft-flux the enemy by making them fire their guns?
- Other ships maintain distance, and, given weapons, do not close in to exposed flanks

The logical expectation would be the reverse, the ship being targeted pulling back, and the others closing in...or, at least, all ships maintaining distance.

Giving an avoid order does prevent Herons from getting in its firing range, but then they aren't using fighters either.

Do timid officers behave the same in this situation?
And I guess I could try to pair something like 2 Herons with a cruiser, while also letting Herons have steady or aggressive officers, and maybe that would work with a cruiser drawing fire(due to being faster) and Herons poking the flanks. But that would require constant babysitting when fighting smaller ships.

[Draba]

Completely forgot the L missiles are turreted on the Astral, shame since Cyclones are really nice now.
Must have felt like pulling teeth getting there, grats

Your tests are very interesting btw, I'm thinking about getting in on this multi ordo testing myself, though the setup seems a bit of a pita.

I'd recommend only herding a strong 5 stack once, then editing the fleet to try different setups.
Minor changes can make a huge unexpected difference and it's much easier to see/quantify against the same enemies.

Best way to use astral:
>ignore recall device
>ignore advanced optics

This feels wrong

It's an endurance fight with only(mostly) Astrals.
Some beams with much more OP in bombers also work very well, but need a different composition.

[Thaago]

@Thaago I think your way would be kind of more intuitive in the sense of how you might think it works, but see Alex's final answer in this post https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=5061.msg387647#msg387647

Oh wow, today I learned! That is really neat, I had the mechanic wrong.

Congratulations on beating the challenge! This was a really fun thread to watch, and seeing how the wing composition evolved was eye opening. I've never tried to build the astral as a brawler, and I'm hidebound enough I would probably never think of doing partial support wings, partial attack wings.

Hmmm, I wonder if Legion XIV or regular Legion would do better? Regular legion can mount 5 PCLs and decent kinetic firepower, XIV can go with large missiles.

[CapnHector]

Thanks all! It was a lot of work actually getting here. The build took about as long to nail down as the Invictus build, but dealing with AI is the real challenge. In fact once I had the build and basic method of moving the fleet down I got close to first trying it but then I made an error in Orders, the AI dropped shields in front of a Nova, and had to try again a few times.

You may notice I use Rally orders here despite generally preferring Defend and Retreat. That is because Retreat causes the ship to drop shields and Defend is unreliably obeyed. Also, near the end, you might think it would be smart to give some order to the Astral that was caught off-guard by a Radiant. That, however, would be a big mistake, since it could cause it to drop shields and / or vent just there while taking fire, even an Eliminate order.

Carrier AI basically needs to be learned from scratch, if you play this fleet forget all you know about commanding combat ships. Since Heron also doesn't have the COMBAT tag you could do what I did to field a fleet of nothing but Herons which is
- Set ship movement targets with Rally order, not Defend or Retreat. Do not trust ships to move correctly without an order.
- To focus fire, manually issue an Eliminate order (not Fighter Strike) on the target, and assign carriers to it
- Attempt at all costs to avoid giving orders other than Rally to ships under fire

That actually makes me think maybe Legion XIV can do this too. Maybe there is another 5 ships 5 Ordos challenge that should be done...

I think you should try. There's an enormous improvement potential in seemingly small tweaks, as evident by your Astral project. I experienced it myself with 4 Executor fleet - version that is challenged by a double Ordo isn't that much different from setup that handles a fat 5xOrdo.

Wanna share your builds?

Yeah, part of the reason I settled on Flash bombers eventually was the outsized effect they had on enemy aggression with a relatively low number of wings.

Their ability to inflict friendly fire and negatively impact friendly ship's shield behavior is a consideration, but I found that to be a non-issue in real battles. My Moras didn't really suffer if they shielded the wrong way for a few moments or took a couple half-powered PCLs to the engine, my Herons were always far enough away to avoid any damage, and even my Glimmers never seemed to die or overload from friendly bombs while in the action. I won't discount the idea that less specialized fleet comps may have more issues with PCL friendly fire, but the strength of PCLs/Flashes should outweigh any of these drawbacks in practice

Thanks again for discovering how good they are!

For me the decisive factor was in fact that they can handle opposing fighters much better than Warthogs. The impact on friendly shield behavior is definitely not a non-issue though. If you are doing this fleet with Omni shield conversion you must try to assure that an Astral is never between another Astral with a Fighter Strike order on the enemy and the enemy since that will cause the Astral to drop shields and re-open them to face the Flashes while taking fire from the enemy, even if it is a Nova.

I think this might also be a problem with Flash- Legion XIV since they might themselves flame out the Legion's engines. The AI's fear of them is not entirely unwarranted, these things will friendly fire on a carrier that is ahead of them.

[Genir]

Wanna share your builds?

Sure. The old build was focused more on range, but Remnants didn't respect that.

New build, besides different weapons and mods, has non-default weapon groups. Linking weapons with Flak Cannon is VERY important for performance and Time To Kill, as it prevents the ship-wide AI from interfering and disabling weapons to save flux. This solves, among others https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=27247.0.

The officers were changed as well, but I don't have old screenshots unfortunately.

[CapnHector]

>4x IR Autolance
>S-modded Advanced Turret Gyros
>Non-contributing slots left empty
>No PD/1 PD gun to fix AI behavior

Wow I love these builds, it's actually perfect. The only thing to disagree with is ADF but really if you want it and your build is already beating 5 Ordos then just go ahead and have it I mean it's probably already better than mine anyway.

Thanks for the protip about the AI, very cool fix! Will actually start doing that on my Executors too.

[Draba]

Linking weapons with Flak Cannon is VERY important for performance and Time To Kill, as it prevents the ship-wide AI from interfering and disabling weapons to save flux.

Nice, now I feel silly for not thinking of that myself.

Wanna share your builds?

Sure. The old build was focused more on range, but Remnants didn't respect that.

How does that setup get through frigates in time, especially without hardened subsystems and ion beams to flame them out?
Nothing in the back always leads to some ion beams parking there for me, and 2 HVDs in the turrets weren't enough even with builtin armored weapon mounts (builtin gyros should be a bit weaker against frigates on paper, IIRC it's additive with other boosts but not sure).
For me the bottleneck was always killing small fry fast enough, and the best solution I could come up with was all turrets being kinetic and adding some IR pulses in the back.

Pilum catapult might be worth a try, it's surprisingly good at overwhelming/distracting the AI, gets some free kills and makes fighting the capirals much safer.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

>4x IR Autolance
>S-modded Advanced Turret Gyros
>Non-contributing slots left empty
>No PD/1 PD gun to fix AI behavior

Wow I love these builds, it's actually perfect.

It's one of the most cursed things I've ever seen, up to and including the image artifacts. If I saw it without context I'd be certain it's a meme.

If THAT can beat five Ordo then I feel like everything I know about the game is wrong.