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[Thaago]

Out of curiosity, how did other bombers fare? Flashes are exceptionally bad in terms of replacement rate - 72 seconds!

[CapnHector]

Well, I'll be honest with you, I only really gave Dagger a chance. It didn't even make it to fleet testing because I first try these out vs Remnant ships in the sim, because I don't want to grind through the fleet only to find the build does nothing to a Radiant; Dagger gives you low DPS than a Warthog with the same replacement rate drain thing as other bombers and also the serious Remnant ships will just take the Atropos on the shields, this bomber can't circle to the rear like a Warthog. Also the OP cost is way too high, I need every OP available and even consider downgrading fighters to save OP so can't really pay 6 extra to accomplish not much. Cobra is extra 1/4th of a Cyclone which I don't really need for that many OP, Longbow has underperformed Sarissa as kinetics in previous testing. I didn't even try non-shielded bombers because my previous experience of using them vs Remnants is they just get sniped by beams without doing much other than destroy your replacement rate. But thinking about it I should probably. Specifically Piranhas at least, don't see the others doing much due to low damage output that can be shield blocked. I'll report if Piranhas are any good.

Messing around with bombers I do think that including 1 Flash wing might in fact have potential. That does not result in too much Replacement Rate drain and it has a fun effect where it actually destroys enemy fighters, generally Flash bombers appear to be worth about a 1.5 Warthog in DCR but they also routinely report a very high number of fighter kills compared to other weapons. I'm not sure if this comes across in the video but control of the airspace (spacespace? battlespace?) is extremely important. Fighters are supposed to do anti frigate duty and you do not want replacement rate spiraling out of control. I'm not going to rule it out that including some amount of Flashes is going to make this more efficient. I also tried 6 Flash per Astral, it's hilariously deadly like the sky is full of PCL charges until replacement rate spirals out of control halfway through the fight and then you're dead.

Oh by the way, if you're interested in another factor I thought about in the decision making for the build, here's a graph of x*(6-0.7*x)/6 which is the graph you get for how many bomber wings you are actually deploying in a steady state where your bomber wings inevitably spiral to 30% replacement rate (seriously why do they drain if rearming but not dead) while your other wings keep 100% replacement rate (e.g. Warthog, Xyphos or empty hangar). Now as you can see you will get the most net bombers per OP from adding 1-2 wings, 3-4 have diminishing returns and adding more than 4 is counterproductive to your steady state number of bombers.



Edit: Yeah 1 Flash is great. I did a test run. Despite how it doesn't achieve PCL saturation which I was theoretically worried about, it does in fact help the other fighters crack armor and destroy other fighters, and 1 Flash doesn't ruin your RR. Now subbing 1 Flash for 1 Warthog and keeping the build otherwise identical, the 1 Flash did about the same damage per DCR as the 2 Warthogs, but with a qualitative improvement in airspace dominance and an extremely high number of Fighter kills (73 for the single Flash wing vs 26 for Sarissa and Warthog combined on one ship, for example). In fact I thought I was actually going to win the combat but then one of my Astrals decided to vent from half flux right in front of a functioning Nova because it was under a rally order I guess. Oh well, the AI on this ship... anyway it's getting really close and when I have a chance to try again with 1-2 Flashes I think there's a real chance I'll win.

Even Piranhas weren't terrible but don't seem as effective as Flash.

[Jang]

Flashes are great bombers, aren't they? I wonder how the Astral recall affects your Flash DPS - when I observe the Flash bombers from my Moras, they do a significant amount of damage after the initial bombing run, where they start lobbing PCLs from behind the target. This is obviously very strong vs Novas and Apexes, who have extremely long or wide sections of unshielded hull.

[Thaago]

Hmmm, would you elaborate more on how you came up with the formula for that plot? I'm intrigued but unsure how it came about/applies. 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.

[Jang]

Edit2: would R ship selection + T move camera to target ship simplify tracking what's happening in the battlespace? I notice in this one you have to spend a lot of time in the tactical view.

Thank you so much, I didn't know about this and it addresses one of my main complaints about fighting battles without a flagship 

[CapnHector]

Flashes are great bombers, aren't they? I wonder how the Astral recall affects your Flash DPS - when I observe the Flash bombers from my Moras, they do a significant amount of damage after the initial bombing run, where they start lobbing PCLs from behind the target. This is obviously very strong vs Novas and Apexes, who have extremely long or wide sections of unshielded hull.

Intriguing! Astrals do use the Recall Device, but if Flashes help kill Apexes faster (that is where we fail) that is another big bonus. I haven't had a chance to try again yet but let's hope it works this time...

Hmmm, would you elaborate more on how you came up with the formula for that plot? I'm intrigued but unsure how it came about/applies. 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.

Astral has 6 hangars. The replacement rate for the whole ship is average of hangars so 1/6 * sum of hangars. The replacement rate of a non-bomber hangar is 100%, so with no bombers we have 1/6*6 replacement rate. Every bomber hangar goes down to 30% so 1/6*(6-0.7x) where x is the number of bombers. But you also deploy x bomber wings with that rate, so x/6*(6-0.7x). This does not apply to other ships, for example for a Mora you'd have x/3(3-0.7x) instead.

[Thaago]

I don't think it works that way? Maybe I'm wrong, but I did not think the replacement rate of individual fighter bays was tracked; rather, the average status of all the wings determines if the global rate is going up, down, or stays the same, right? It has a similar effect in that easy to replace wings can keep the rate higher when mixed with long rebuild ones, but I don't think it follows a nice curve like that.

[CapnHector]

@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

[BigBrainEnergy]

I didn't know that's how replacement rate worked. That's actually better than the more intuitive way, because a wing like flashes hitting 30% can only drag the average down by ~12% by itself where the more intuitive way it could drain the whole system straight down to 30.

[CapnHector]

Woohoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! I actually did it! I won this combat with 5 Astrals vs 5 Ordos in 1 engagement, no retreat. Hardest win of my life, I kept redesigning and redesigning the ship until I finally found a loadout and tactics that worked.

By the end I was only changing fighters since I was fairly sure the ship was optimal. I noticed that I could field Warthog-Flash-Flash-Claw-Sarissa-Sarissa and this dealt appreciably more damage and RR stayed bearable (dropping to about 40% at the worst for at most a few ships which is recoverable). However while Claw had been helping Warthogs catch up to things they were not helping me in the Radiant & Apex fights. So I swapped to Xyphos to have EMP that synergizes with the ship. Then, now that I have 3 support fighters, I could swap to Broadsword and replacement rate still stayed manageable. So the final loadout was Broadsword - Flash - Flash - Xyphos - Sarissa - Sarissa.




Video is uploading as I write and going in the OP as soon as it is up.

[Hatter]

Wow! It was interesting to see the progression here. I guess it makes sense so much of the reapers' damage is on shields, I imagine they force overloads and the flash bomber follows up for the kill.

Was the recall device any use at all, or would the Astrals be stronger in this situation with a different system (I.E- targeting feed)? There are a lot of support fighters that get no benefit from it in a full half the bays.

[Alex]

Haha, wow! Congratulations, this one was particularly fascinating to follow

[CapnHector]

Haha, wow! Congratulations, this one was particularly fascinating to follow

Thanks! It was particularly fascinating to build too. I really like this ship now. Always liked the design but now the gameplay too. This game has the most amazing ships and you never know what they might be capable of when you just tinker with them a lot apparently.

Wow! It was interesting to see the progression here. I guess it makes sense so much of the reapers' damage is on shields, I imagine they force overloads and the flash bomber follows up for the kill.

Was the recall device any use at all, or would the Astrals be stronger in this situation with a different system (I.E- targeting feed)? There are a lot of support fighters that get no benefit from it in a full half the bays.

I honestly don't know how much they use the Recall Device if at all, can't really keep your attention on the fighters. I have to imagine not much and I should hope not much since it is a 6000 flux spike to recall 1 bomber wing. Active flare launcher would definitely be an upgrade for this build.

Video is up, adding a link to OP! Processing but should start soon.

[eert5rty7u8i9i7u6yrewqdef]

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?

Edit: When you get back to me, I may need some time before I can get back to you on the results of flash bombers. I've fought seven medium difficulty Ordos all of which had flash bombers, and in an incredibly cursed turn of events, I not only didn't get a single bomber, but I now have six new alpha cores.

[Genir]

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?