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[Thaago]

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• When railguns drive hardflux up the target still has a long way to go to get out of mauler range.
  With long range kinetic it often starts escaping faster and tanks less armor/hull DPS for a lower distance.
  Average distance at which reapers are fired at is probably also lower, but that's really hard to measure.
• All S/M ballistic kinetics are decent to great. All S HE options are weak for general use so S will be all railguns for the accuracy.
  Fighters also lean towards kinetic, broadswords are still good.
  What's missing is accurate HE that can still put a dent in bigger ships and open slots are M ballistics, the only option in S/M is mauler.

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Good reasoning! I recall that way back when this was described as "kill box" building, with kinetics shorter ranged than HE to encourage enemies to get close, get fluxed up, then have no choice but to try to retreat under heavy HE fire and get punished. I wonder if something similar for Onslaught might be good, maybe even using the * gasp * Hephaestus on top of small/medium kinetics.

[eert5rty7u8i9i7u6yrewqdef]

Typhoon has 18 shots at 15s base reload (and free ECCM here), Cyclone 30 shots at 10s.
2 Typhoons aren't in the same ballpark as 2 Cyclones, just mentioned them because having armor crackers that last an entire battle really helps out something like autopulse (tends to punch itself out on shields and isn't too hot against heavy armor).

Breach missiles should last the entire battle.

In the meantime did try Odysseys and it can't be done with 5 IMO (also thought that about Invictus though).
S energies are dead weight and it really needs squall to have enough shield damage and some flux left, but squalls run out in a marathon like this.
Can't trade with the 700 range hardflux options, can't take shields down with HIL. 700 range PDAI irpulse spam+double HIL+pilum catapult and 1 autopulse on both sides, builtin mags, 1 HIL and LR PD spam came closest.
It really needs a "standard" battle where it can use squall+reapers+double HIL to shine.

Due to the Odyssey's short-range weapons, besides beams, try the Sarissa on it alongside something like a Gladius. Have its two weapons large energy weapons be autopulse lasers with built in expanded mags. Fill its three medium missile slots with breach missiles.

Basically, try to build it for short range fighting as it lacks hard flux damage in the long-range department. I would do the testing myself, but I can't be bothered to do the save editing just to test if I can seal club Ordos.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

HE is just as good as kinetic against shields, just need lots of it

And for it to be flux-free, like PCLs or Warthogs.

[TheLaughingDead]

In the meantime did try Odysseys and it can't be done with 5 IMO (also thought that about Invictus though).
S energies are dead weight and it really needs squall to have enough shield damage and some flux left, but squalls run out in a marathon like this.
Can't trade with the 700 range hardflux options, can't take shields down with HIL. 700 range PDAI irpulse spam+double HIL+pilum catapult and 1 autopulse on both sides, builtin mags, 1 HIL and LR PD spam came closest.
It really needs a "standard" battle where it can use squall+reapers+double HIL to shine.

Can't speak to longevity against six ordos (though they lasted through CapnHector's five) but PCLs are great on a duel-Autopulse Ody because they do high + consistent HE DPS and can fire from about the same range as Autopulse, and maybe Locusts could keep it up all fight (Or at least help with frigate/destroyer phase, where fast Ody is most vulnerable)? I know at least Sarrissa(s) see some use on the Ody, even with ITU; frigates that get on its non-broadside are almost free to run amok, the Sarrissa(s) help there, and often the Ody boosts well within range with its ship system.
Since I grab Expanded Magazines, I usually slap an Antimatter Blaster on the very nose just as a little middle finger to my opponents, but I don't think that the ammo would last, and I'm not sure if getting that close would really help with an endurance test. Now, if there were some tactic that kept the Ody pack moving, rather than lining up with long-range weaponry like Executor or Legions, I bet that could really chew through a lot. Perhaps some sort of tactic where the pack circles the battlefield capturing points and picking off stragglers? Or even just an avoid order on their massive death ball. Two Ody at the top to pick off reinforcements?
But, it would probably take longer and be more order-intensive; would the Ody even have the PPT? Could it backpedal fast enough to avoid getting jumped by, say, a Nova and a Brilliant straying from objective? Can AI handle shields well enough to survive that kind of pressure? What if the two Ody at the top get pinched against the top wall by the death ball, or reinforcements come in while they are still at full flux? Seems iffy. And I don't think there is any mono-fleet non-Omega Ody build that could handle even five ordos in a line battle. The ship is made to move, darnit!

[Jang]

I was gonna go back to messing around with Executors but I had more fun with these Legions since these Aggressive burn drive ships are somehow less suicidal than Steady beam Execs...

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I ended up liking Extended Shields more than the omni shield I usually go for due to the friendly PCL shield behavior that's been talked about before. I was also wrong about EMR maybe not being necessary, guess I'm really conservative with PCLs when manually flying. Tested Field Mod over Impact Mit but these Legions usually died when they got stuck in front of another friendly Legion, so I valued the added maneuverability more than slightly better shield and flux stats. I was really dangerously low on CR at the end, and CR was the reason it took multiple attempts to not lose a Legion. Better commanding might make the difference, considering CapnHector commanded more aggressively and ended the battle much quicker than me, but Combat Endurance over Gunnery Implants might still be a good move for consistency. And of course I had to add a Flash bomber, they make such a big impact even if I cringe every time they bomb another Legion's engines lol.

[Thaago]

Cool build! Two questions:
Did you find the rangefinder to be very important to the build? It strikes me as a lot of op for boosting 4 guns.
How did the dual flak perform compared to another PCL? Did you see it noticeably shooting down incoming strike missiles? Since your build has significantly weaker shields than CapnHector I could see the importance of stopping HE attacks being higher.

[Jang]

Thanks! BRF does make a significant difference in the combat report, with LDAC relative damage going from 10-15% to ~20%, but I don't really know if it's the best use of 25 OP. I tested variants without BRF that could still make it to the final Radiants so it's definitely not strictly necessary. The Dual Flak is worth it for Reapers imo, and in the combat report you can see that it's shooting down 100+ missiles on each Legion. I tried offloading PD to a Xyphos wing to fit 5 PCLs, but Xyphos are just not that effective here.

[Thaago]

That's really interesting, its so cool to see different design/command styles cranking out ordo kills.

[Jang]

Yeah I'm learning cool stuff in this thread too. Never would've crossed my mind to go all-in on Warthogs vs Remnants, or to put 5 Maulers on a Reaper Legion XIV lol.

Edit: Did another 5 ordos with a more shield-oriented loadout and officer, very similar to CapnHector's original loadout, and I think I like it better. It was definitely easier to keep all the Legions alive this time

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[Vanshilar]

Conquest I've said previously I don't think it could but that's not due to fragility, just large missiles running out before it's over and being a large part of the ships' firepower, but that too probably needs testing since if you are aggressive enough then maybe Squalls can last, or maybe there's a kooky Cyclone layout that exists. Retribution... let's aim for a little less than 5 Ordos first and see how it goes. Odyssey I actually have no idea.

Actually Conquest should be able to do just fine, since even if the missiles run out, by that time you're already onto the bigger ships which it can pummel from afar. For me even against 5 Ordos the Locusts hadn't run out yet, even though the Squalls had. (And funny enough by the end even one of the Gryphons had run out of missiles heh.) So in that fight, the two Mjolnirs did something like half of the overall non-beam damage (ignoring the beams since their damage reported is incorrect), i.e. as much as HVDs, Squalls, Locusts, and Harpoons put together. It's really the Mjolnirs doing the bulk of the work.

The biggest headache for me for the Conquests is that they continually move to the flanks, since they're broadside ships, so it's really hard to keep them together. So I ended up having right-facing versions (which are on the left side) and left-facing versions (which are on the right side), moving them to their correct respective sides at the beginning of the fight, and then trying to keep them relatively close together with me leading up the middle in the flagship Onslaught, to make it work. Corralling them in that way might be harder in a pure AI fleet though.

I think the hard part of an all-Odyssey fleet would be similar, i.e. since there are only left-facing versions, all the Odysseys end up clumping together on the right part of the map, blocking each other's line of fire and preventing the front lines from backing off. So I would be more concerned about that over anything else for the Odyssey.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

Actually Conquest should be able to do just fine, since even if the missiles run out, by that time you're already onto the bigger ships which it can pummel from afar.

Aren't bigger ships exactly the issue? In my experience Radiants murder Coqnuests without Squalls. Neither Mjolnirs nor HVDs are efficient against shields and Conquest itself has worst shield efficiency in the game so you just straight up lose the flux battle.

[CapnHector]

Radiants without missiles seems non-trivial as the Conquest has a lot of trouble handing the burst of even one Assault Radiant even if it has Hardened and Stabilized Shields and a ton of caps apparently.

Anybody have any success with putting Cyclones in front? After all these builds I've done that is kind of what I want to do now. However it seems to confuse the AI, so that despite 2 Mjolnirs to one side it tries to keep the Cyclones pointed at the enemy even when they are not ready to fire.

I mean I guess we can just disregard the ballistics and put a Kinetic Blaster to either side of the Cyclones and call that a Conquest, in memory of the "optimal" "builds" "thread's" Conquest loadouts.