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[CapnHector]

With all the new ships, it may seem like the Onslaught is not as powerful as it once was. This is not the case. It is incredibly powerful. Here's my showcase of 200 DP of Onslaught (XIV) vs 2200 DP of Remnants including 6 Radiants and 5 Novas. No retreat, no Onslaughts lost. Did lose civilian auxiliaries playing it safe, probably didn't have to since these ships are quite capable of dueling Alpha Core Radiants on their own.

The biggest weakness here are frigates with EMP, since we couldn't afford decent protection, so we start the battle with a little unusual strategy. Enjoy the show, it'll start as soon as video is uploaded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j6-h-h-eUw

My build:


Hey look, I even put PD on it this time! I originally even had vulcan facing the rear but I took that out when it shot down like 9 missiles during an earlier 6 Ordo try, I am not paying 4 OP for that. We use the flak to turn on true autofire.



Officer skills:


My skills:


DCR page 1


DCR page 2


1v1ing Radiants


Writeup in form of PAQ:

Spoiler

Q: Where is Heavy Armor?
A: Couldn't afford it. Also all the armor in the world won't stop these levels of missile spam. Shield tank or die. I would have it though, but it's too expensive in OP or maneuverability.

Q: Why 3x Hephag?
A: I have previous excellent experience of Remnant farming with Omni-LAC + 3x Hephag builds from .95.1. We need the killing speed to deal with the insane number of ships coming at us in a reasonable amount of time is about the long and short of it, even more than any defense Devastator could provide.

Q: Isn't this a little overfluxed?
A: Only if more than 1 Hephag is firing.

Q: Thumper?
A: I know right? First use of Thumper in history? It's there to shred frigates and turns out it does it well. At least I couldn't come up with anything better for the same OP.

Q: What are all the civvie ships?
A: This was inspired by Draba's 6 Ordo Legion. They provide 43% ECM so after the frigate phase (I monitor ECM to tell when it is over by the way) where we measure up to a ridiculous >90% ECM, we start actually winning the ECM war. You could basically just deploy whatever random civilian ships you have around for this, although Colossus is probably optimal and Kite for officers since it is also an excellent objective grabber.

Q: Seriously your engine is disabled half the time, do you know there are hullmods for that?
A: I really wish I could afford RFC or Insulated Engines, but I need the caps to be able to duel Radiants. So the solution is micro and keeping a good formation.

[close]

[Void Ganymede]

All I can see is the faces of the crew from those 3 Colossi as they're being awarded combat deployment medals afterwards.

Edit: wait they didn't make it out RIP :<

>Hey lads, you're technically a cruiser, right? Lot of cargo space for EWAR gear yeah?
>Sir this is a civilian cargo vessel carrying suppli-
>New orders from command! Equipment's being transferred as we speak!

[CapnHector]

Yeah honestly this was the first time I gave an unarmed Colossus an Eliminate order on a Radiant. Should probably have put Blast Doors on it at least. Oh well. I guess we need posthumous medals because it was a really good effort.

[Thaago]

Obviously fake, Hephaestus are terrible after all

But no, this is really cool build - going shield tank over using more PD is interesting. I see several times when it really bites you, but also when it is a good call. It certainly helps endurance.

I do think the prevalence of dlacs over any other gun points to them being a bit overtuned in the current patch, but thats ok.

I'm addicted to s mod expanded magazines on onslaughts to boost their main guns. I think it really helps vs Radiants, as they are very efficient and you demonstrate that often there are multiple onslaughts firing their TPCs on a single Radiant where other guns don't reach. During that whole long chase at the end where the onslaughts are just whittling down hull, +50% DPS + burst advantage on the TPCs is nice.

[CapnHector]

I did consider S-magazines but went a different route. That is because I figured the TPCs are basically slightly weaker by dps (but better hit strength), fixed mount, long range autopulse lasers. Now autopulse lasers are great but when I am very short on OP and can only S-mod 3 things, out of which 1 is absolutely necessary (extended shields) and 1 is just +10-15% damage during the fight's hardest part, then I want something more than +250 energy damage steady state on the autopulses for my final S-mod.

But that's not all. If you make your Onslaught rely on the TPCs (in my build I instead kind of treat them like a nice bonus) then you have to get +maneuverability and you lose your guns if you get flamed out because of the fixed mount. Meanwhile these ships keep happily dakka-dakka-dakkaing despite engines flaming out.

DLACs are what makes this tick, I did not have success with railguns.

I can tell you how I ended up with a shield tank Onslaught, it started with a more conventional build with actual Heavy Armor too. I noticed it has the guns to do 5 Ordo pretty easy, so I figured I can make it do 6 Ordo. But in that fight, invariably by the final Radiants, if you are not a shield tank, your armor is busted, and since you do not have the ability to shield tank an Alpha Core Assault Radiant's burst you are just toast. So basically it was the only way I saw and then work from there even though it does have some significant problems.

[Grievous69]

Obviously fake, Hephaestus are terrible after all

I mean looking at the stats they didn't even do that amazingly, and it has 3 of them. Obviously perfect for this build as with the sheer power of LDACs you just want to kill things fast disregarding flux costs and hit strength. Doesn't mean now that the weapon is good, it got carried by everything else in this build. Hell even the Thumpers are here.

[CapnHector]

Yeah this is the use you want the Heph for. It did do about 50% of the hull damage and most of the armor damage, it sure is expensive but Mjolnir for similar DPS would be even more so.

The Thumpers got to stay because when I endcombat'd in the frigate phase they had done about as much hull damage as all the LDACs put together, for just 2 more OP a piece, even though their usefulness ends in that phase too. This ship hates frigates so much it will even take a really bad ballistic IR Autolance. Then later I in fact had the idea that I'm going to rip out the Thumpers and put the RFC I'm missing in their place, but I started dying to the frigates. So the Thumpers got to say and it is the first time I actually found them useful.

(As you can tell this build took more than a few tries to find)

[vladokapuh]

downsizing mediums now hmm..
time for medium ballistic integration?

[Draba]

I do think the prevalence of dlacs over any other gun points to them being a bit overtuned in the current patch, but thats ok.

DLAC being ~free kinetic helps, but once you figure out a way to prevent frigates/scintillas wrapping around I think lots of other loadouts can work.
This battle is mostly decided by cheesing retreats so the Onslaughts are keeping close without blocking AND can't be surrounded.
Seriously now, non-stupid formations shouldn't be locked behind spamming 1000 unrelated commands. Even eliminate on the other side of the map doesn't guarantee the ship will start moving in that direction.

Obviously fake, Hephaestus are terrible after all

Doesn't mean now that the weapon is good, it got carried by everything else in this build.

Their use is narrower than usual, but Onslaught needs exactly something like heph in the mid mount so it's good there.
Lots of weapons like this (HIL and autolances are also pretty niche and need other weapons to work).

I'm addicted to s mod expanded magazines on onslaughts to boost their main guns. I think it really helps vs Radiants, as they are very efficient and you demonstrate that often there are multiple onslaughts firing their TPCs on a single Radiant where other guns don't reach. During that whole long chase at the end where the onslaughts are just whittling down hull, +50% DPS + burst advantage on the TPCs is nice.

Love TPCs and used builtin mags every chance I got on them, here I think they are a hindrance.
Using burst flux on enemy far away, enemy casually takes 2 steps back, the rest possibly gets chip damage on the Onslaught.
Lots of wasted flux and time, lots of attrition.

[CapnHector]

Yeah it's all formation with this one. The ship doesn't work without it*. That said with armor tanking builds I could get to the Radiants but never beat them for reasons mentioned above, so I think it needs a build in this vein although swaps of weapons for example can probably be done. I never could get far with 1x Hephag 2x Devastator though either, which I initially thought would be stronger. That one basically can't finish Apexes off in a timely way, if it even makes it that far because beam Glimmer swarms are another terror that will legit just eat Onslaughts if something like 7 beam Glimmers can build up, if you are not very aggressive with your guns. That's why I ended up thinking 3x big DPS gun is best and I can't afford Mjolnir so.

Anyway to be able to use the formation without Retreat orders I think BBE said there's a setting that removes the thing that you can't place waypoints closer than a certain distance from the edge, when I mentioned these maneuvers in another thread IIRC. That would be much more sane to just change settings because you are your own worst enemy with this strategy: forget to cancel a retreat and you lose a ship. And by extension the fight because there is no retreating for all the ships from this one, not with this build. However, I don't want to do it because I want to keep as close to vanilla as possible.

*Edit: not to a 6 Ordo standard I mean. Vs a lesser multi-Ordo these can of course just defend a point.

[Vanshilar]

It looks like you're aiming for flux efficiency with the Onslaught build; in which case, have you considered using Arbalests for the medium ballistics? I suspect they'll end up with pretty similar flux efficiency considering they have a better hit strength, but they'll give you more damage output.

I never could get far with 1x Hephag 2x Devastator though either, which I initially thought would be stronger. That one basically can't finish Apexes off in a timely way, if it even makes it that far because beam Glimmer swarms are another terror that will legit just eat Onslaughts if something like 7 beam Glimmers can build up, if you are not very aggressive with your guns. That's why I ended up thinking 3x big DPS gun is best and I can't afford Mjolnir so.

Funny enough, for my flagship Onslaught I ended up concluding the same thing, i.e. side Devastators simply don't provide enough damage, so I switched over to 3 Hephs. I also had to learn how to use shift to disable auto-turn to cursor (since I have it on normally) so that I can face sideways a bit, so that I can hit a target with 2 Hephs at once and yet still fire PCL's at it. So I turn towards the next target (so that my TPCs and the weapons on the "other" side can start hitting it) while I have the current target selected so that the Hephs can finish it off quickly. That improved my flagship damage output from around 1500 DPS to around 1700 DPS or so and shaved around 10 seconds off the battle completion time. (By comparison, an AI Conquest can provide roughly 800 DPS and an AI Gryphon can provide roughly 350-400 DPS.)

Obviously this doesn't work for the AI, but if the AI is getting surrounded, then side damage output is good too.

Anyway to be able to use the formation without Retreat orders I think BBE said there's a setting that removes the thing that you can't place waypoints closer than a certain distance from the edge, when I mentioned these maneuvers in another thread IIRC.

That parameter is combatMapBorderPadForWaypoints in settings.json by the way.

[Thaago]

Maybe they are better this version, but I don't see much value in devastators for the onslaught side mounts. I should give them a fair shake again because I know they were changed, but my ingrained perception is that they are not very effective. If I'm attacking an onslaught with other ships I certainly prefer to see a devastator rather than any other large ballistic.

[Edit] Good point on the arbalests! I should also try those more, that 200 shot size is really not bad.

[CapnHector]

I'm not that excited about Arbalest here, since you would be paying 8 OP for 167 DPS with a range of 1.8*700+100=1360, vs 5 OP for 143 DPS with a range of 1.8*600+200 for 1280. In either case you will outrange Remnant energy weapons even on their capitals when ECM bonus is in effect (1.8*700*.9=1134). So it's really just 3 OP for 24 DPS if I'm not mistaken. Do that four times and you have an extra Light Autocannon for 12 OP in DPS terms and also it costs 156 flux/second to fire. I don't know if the shot strength would help overwhelm frigate shields, but the rate of fire might also make it worse vs frigates. Didn't try it in practice though, did think about it but decided to pursue OP and flux efficiency.

[Vanshilar]

Maybe they are better this version, but I don't see much value in devastators for the onslaught side mounts. I should give them a fair shake again because I know they were changed, but my ingrained perception is that they are not very effective. If I'm attacking an onslaught with other ships I certainly prefer to see a devastator rather than any other large ballistic.

Yeah I think I put Devastators on the sides since I saw other people doing it, but realistically, in my case I have PCLs for PD anyway. Also, they'll fire at ships from max range even though very few shots will actually make it there, so in many cases they were basically just draining my flux. (I'm not sure how the random range they explode at is determined.) So when I started looking for ways to increase my damage output, replacing them became an obvious path forward.

I'm not that excited about Arbalest here, since you would be paying 8 OP for 167 DPS with a range of 1.8*700+100=1360, vs 5 OP for 143 DPS with a range of 1.8*600+200 for 1280. In either case you will outrange Remnant energy weapons even on their capitals when ECM bonus is in effect (1.8*700*.9=1134).

Actually, since Ballistic Rangefinder affects base range, both of them have identical range on the Onslaught, i.e. 800 base range * 1.85 (ITU, GI, BM) = 1480 su. But I'm looking more at the anti-hull damage for the hit strength (which doesn't matter vs shields), since to kill a ship you need a combination of anti-shield DPS, anti-armor DPS, and anti-hull DPS. In this case the Arbalest would likely have more than double the damage to hull compared with the LDAC. Higher anti-hull DPS not only means killing the enemy ship faster, but also means less chance of the ship getting away to heal up, so it's also a pretty important stat to look at for weapons. I tend to use the HVD for this reason; despite it being about half the DPS of the Heavy Needler "on paper" it actually beats the Heavy Needler against hull, and is around 90% of the DPS of the HAC against hull (and, more flux-efficient than either against hull). So it's actually a pretty decent all-around weapon.

I would think it's more a matter of whether or not the Arbalest fits within your OP or flux budget, etc. compared with LDACs.

[CapnHector]

Imagine being able to beat 6 Ordos and still being confused about the range modifiers in this game. Thanks. I discounted the hull damage bonus because we have plenty of that from other weapons.

I think the absolute highest priority upgrade for this ship, if I had any extra OP, would be Resistant Flux Conduits. That one would probably boost damage output too by reducing flameouts. Just can't get the 15 OP from anywhere though. The caps are needed vs Radiants.