First off, I have seen many references to SO Aurora. In my first playthrough I found the Aurora to be a very capable ship compared to other cruisers, to the point I was using two of them. What is it exactly that makes the Aurora so good and worth 50% more DP than a normal cruiser? Why is SO really good on an Aurora but not a typical 20 DP cruiser?
The Aurora combines good offensive power (high flux dissipation), good defensive power (good flux capacity and very good shield efficiency -- at 0.6, the best in the game (the lower the better)), and good maneuverability (high top speed and maneuverability, including from its shipsystem), all in one package. Safety Overrides helps it lean into its advantages more; energy weapons tend to have shorter ranges anyway so it's not as hampered by the range decrease, and SO doubling the flux dissipation and greatly increasing its speed means it can get in to do a lot of burst damage where it counts and get out more quickly.
I see s-modded Expanded Magazines recommended on the Onslaught, but I think it only helps the built-in TPC on that ship. Is it worth spending an S-mod to help only one weapon?
It can, it depends. TPC has good range and is very flux-efficient, and s-modded Expanded Magazines means it'll end up doing 50% more damage (the limiting factor is usually ammo recharge, not rate of fire). Depends on how you run your Onslaught but for me, using it as flagship, with s-mod Expanded Magazines TPC usually does around 20% of the total damage, meaning that s-mod Expanded Magazines adds about 7% to my overall damage output.
I saw in Gryphon discussion that this ship is only good when you link the missiles to a single firing group. Are there other ships where there are unintuitive linking groups that make the ship perform better? There was a post on one of the Executor threads referring to linking a flak cannon to some of the weapons to make them fire better. What is going on mechanically when you do that?
There are actually two different mechanisms going on here, although they're for the same purpose -- making the AI fire the weapons more. The AI controls each ship similar to the player, i.e. one weapon group is manually controlled (presumably with an imaginary cursor to aim it), while all other weapon groups are on autofire on (each fires if a target gets in range) or autofire off (none of them will fire).
For a typical Squall/Harpoon Gryphon, both of those missiles have 2500 range, but the Harpoons, being High Explosive, will usually not fire unless the target is at high flux. Ships at high flux tend to back off though, and since the Harpoons aren't that fast, it means the target may get away by the time the Harpoons arrive. By putting them in the same weapon group, the Harpoons start heading to the target as it comes under fire from the Squalls, increasing the chance that the target dies before it gets away.
The AI is generally overly conservative about running up its own flux levels; it'll start turning off autofire on weapon groups pretty quickly, i.e. when its current flux gets to say 30-50% of its total flux. (You can think of flux as "waste heat" in some sense.) But once its turns off its weapons, if the enemy ships keep firing, they'll continue driving up its flux, meaning it'll keep turning off more weapons instead of pressing the attack and driving up the flux on the enemy's ships to get them to stop attacking. This leads to a bad feedback loop where the AI will just sit there, take damage, and then die.
To prevent this, you can mix some PD weapons in with your weapon group(s). The AI is very loathe to turn off weapon groups that have PD on them, letting them stay on even up to 90% flux or higher, so this ensures that those weapons are always on and firing. A Flak Cannon is a PD weapon so it ensures that weapon groups with it will stay on even when the AI would have normally turned them off.
However, you need to use this with care, since the AI really will keep those weapons on (almost) all the time, which means the AI will overload more easily. I usually recommend grouping kinetic weapons which have good flux efficiency together with PD weapons, but
not weapons in general -- only the ones that should absolutely always stay on to keep flux pressure on the enemy and help win the "flux war".
Besides LP Brawler, what are other good SO ships?
I like the LP Manticore, and for player piloting, the Medusa. Once you reach the late game though SO tends to fall off in effectiveness so you'll want to explore other options, but for the early- and mid-game, it's great.
Why is the Hyperion so good? For 15 DP it seems to have really low weapon space.
It's basically a light cruiser masquerading as a frigate. You want to look at flux stats more than number of weapon slots. It's also very small and maneuverable (and thus hard to hit), and its shipsystem is to teleport around meaning it can easily get away, making it very hard to kill. As a frigate, it also benefits from frigate skills (most notably, Wolfpack Tactics), and frigate OP costs. Putting SO on it only costs 15 OP but you get 500 (or more) flux dissipation out of it, which is a very good deal.
Is there a good discussion of XP mechanics anywhere?
The base XP that you get is based on the sum of the FP (not DP) of each enemy ship multiplied by (5 + level of officer on that ship) * 100. If a ship has no officer then its FP is multiplied by 600 (i.e. as if it had a level 1 officer). This product is then rounded down to the nearest 500, and then all of these products are added together. So it's basically static per enemy fleet -- not particularly interesting.
What's more interesting is that you can get a % bonus to that XP if your fleet is relatively "small" compared with the sum of the fleet(s) that you're facing. You can get up to a +500% XP bonus, meaning you can get up to 6x more XP by having a fleet that is good at killing lots of enemies quickly. I've written about the XP bonus formula, for example
here. The basic gist is that it compares your fleet's total DP with the enemy fleet's total DP, noting that officers also add to each side. Enemy officers count double in terms of the XP bonus you get, but the overall enemy fleet score is multiplied by 0.67, so it kind of evens out. So if the enemy's DP for XP bonus purposes is double yours, then you get a +100% XP bonus, if it's triple then you get a +200% XP bonus, etc.
So having unused ships in your fleet can hurt your XP (but you should be throwing them in storage anyway -- there are some free storage locations in abandoned spacedocks such as in Corvus near Asharu), thus in general you want a relatively "lean" fleet where each ship contributes a lot to each battle, and have a fleet that can take on numbers if you're going for maximizing your XP bonus.
For your fleet, you can roughly estimate your fleet's DP score for XP bonus purposes by adding up each ship's DP, then adding each officer as 7.5 + 3.75 * level to that, noting that you the character at level 15 counts as 7.5 + 3.75 * 15 = 63.75 DP. Civilian ships only count as 1/4 of their DP. At the higher end of faction fleets, level 10 and above bounties are usually around 650-700 DP for XP bonus purposes (
not the DP of the fleet), so that amount divided by your fleet's DP for XP bonus purposes will tell you how much bonus you get. Then once you hit [REDACTED] fleets, they average around 1100 DP for XP bonus purposes (and close to 700k base XP) so you can easily get millions of XP per fight from them. My endgame fleet hits the +500% XP cap at double [REDACTED], netting about 4 million base XP per fight, meaning up to 16 million XP depending on how much SP XP I've saved up -- all for a fight that lasts around 4 minutes (according to the Detailed Combat Results mod). So there are certainly ways to increase your XP gain once you hit the endgame.
If there are any detailed discussions on the pros and cons of other weapon categories (e.g. large ballistics, small energy, whatever), use cases, good synergies with other weapons and s-mods, good ships to use them on, can you point me to them? Most of the discussion is from older versions and I assume the stats on a lot of these weapons have changed.
You basically have 3 types of defenses for the weapons to go through: shields, then armor, then hull, generally in that order. So it's not about which one is better but having a mix of weapons which together can deal with all 3 defenses. Kinetic weapons are anti-shield, High Explosive (HE) weapons are anti-armor, and fragmentation weapons are good against hull but tend to be bad against shields and armor. Energy has no particular damage bonuses. Shields and hull are relatively straightforward (it's basically just the sum of the individual weapons), but armor depends highly on the weapon with the highest hit strength. Hit strength for projectile weapons is the per-shot damage, and is modified by weapon damage type (kinetic = /2, HE = *2, frag = /4). So generally speaking, you'll want to have one or maybe two good HE weapons, and the rest would be kinetic/energy/frag weapons.
Small ballistics are usually kinetic, because the hit strength is so low that they can't really function as anti-armor weapons. For medium ballistics, I tend to favor the Hypervelocity Driver (HVD) since it has good range, good hit strength (despite being kinetic), and decent damage. The good hit strength means that it also doubles as good anti-hull, not just good anti-shield, compared with most other kinetic weapons. But if the ship has no other source of HE damage, one of the medium ballistics would be a Heavy Mauler. I tend to use HE on large ballistics, because chances are the ship also has plenty of medium and small ballistics to put kinetic weapons on those. So I generally use Hephaestus on large ballistics, although sometimes I'll use Mjolnir if the ship has enough flux to support it (i.e. Conquest).
For missile, if the ship has one large missile slot I almost always use Squall, which deal kinetic damage at very long range and disrupts enemy formations, putting them on the defensive before the ships get in range. But if there are two large missile slots then I usually put Locust on the second one, to help clean up trash around the ship. The Locust would be linked in the same weapon group as the Squall to ensure that it's always firing.
For medium missile it really depends on the situation, though I've typically used Harpoon Pods, Annihilator Pods, or Proximity Charge Launchers. PCL's are great on the player flagship, the AI doesn't spam them enough.
For small missile, it's generally not going to be the star but it helps fill out the weapon complement. Note that there is also now the Missile Autoloader hullmod which helps boost small missile ammo. I've generally used Harpoons, Annihilators, or Swarmers. The Annihilators really help to throw a bunch of "stuff" at the enemy to fill up the space between ships with your stuff that can help take down enemy missiles, make enemies scared, etc.
For energies, small energy is generally going to be IR Pulse Laser for its decent anti-shield capability, for energy weapons, anyway, since high-tech ships tend to be weaker at that. Some people will prefer Antimatter Blaster for its strike capability, which works too. This is also where I might stick some PD for midline ships, to have PD and also to force autofire on. Generally that ends up being LR PD laser.
For medium energy, if you're going SO or mid-range then you can choose between Heavy Blaster (good damage but very flux-inefficient), Pulse Laser (good for anti-shield), or Ion Pulser (good for initial burst damage and disabling weapons). Kinetic Blaster is good anti-shield damage but tends to be too inefficient at anything else compared with Pulse Laser. If you're going long range, then right now it's a tossup between Graviton Beam and IR Autolance. Graviton increases anti-shield damage of
all other weapons on the target as well, but IR Autolance is killer against stripped hull. It's hard to tell which is better.
For large energy, I've generally used HIL, but will sometimes use Autopulse or Plasma if I want to close in. But if there are other sources of anti-shield hard flux weapons to make them drop their shields, HIL is a good choice.
So for example, for Conquest, the weapons I use are Squall, Locust, 2 Harpoon Pods (all linked together so the others will fire whenever the Squall fires), then 2 Mjolnirs, 2 HVD, Graviton Beam, and 4 LR PD Lasers all on one side, all linked together. The Conquest has plenty of flux so I'm not concerned about overfluxing it from linking weapons to PD, and I want them firing at all times. It's a long-range ship and shouldn't take much damage anyway. Yes the Harpoon Pods will run out, but I want it to be firing a lot at the beginning, which is the most critical phase of battle, and don't mind that it runs out later on when the enemy fleet is streaming in rather than arriving as one big mass.
For Eradicator, I use 2 HVD, 1 Heavy Mauler, 4 Railguns, 4 Annihilators, and 1 Breach. The Heavy Mauler provides that one main anti-armor, with Breach as backup in between (since the fire rate of the Heavy Mauler is low), the Annihilators provide a lot of distraction, and the rest are general anti-shield. The HVDs also contribute a lot to anti-hull. In this case, I use Ballistic Rangefinder, despite it just giving the base +100 base range bonus, because it helps the Eradicator stay a bit farther away and take less damage. The less damage you take, the more flux you can spend on damaging the enemy fleet.
For Champion, the large missile is Squall, the large energy is HIL, the mediums are HVDs, and the smalls are LR PD Lasers or Tactical Lasers. The Squalls and HVDs provide enough anti-shield damage for the HIL to be very effective here.
For my flagship Onslaught, the 3 large ballistics are all Hephaestus, the 3 front medium ballistics are Heavy Autocannons while the inner 2 medium ballistics are HVDs to match range, while the small ballistics are Light Needlers and Light Autocannons on the side, with Ballistic Rangefinder. Some people prefer LDAC but I prefer Light Needlers and LACs for the greater range. The medium missiles are Proximity Charge Launchers.
The ship has a lot of frontal firepower, but its highest anti-armor/hull damage is actually when it's facing to the side of the target, so that the side Hephaestus can also fire at the target. It turns out that the Onslaught can have so much firepower that one Hephaestus is simply not enough damage, so the second one is also used. So the way I use it is that it faces its current target with its kinetics (Hephaestus weapon group turned off), then once the target's shields go down, I turn on the Hephaestus weapon group and then start pointing the nose at the next target, so that its TPCs and kinetics start firing at the next target while the HE weapon group finishes off the current one. In this way I can keep killing targets without stopping, except to vent because the flux rise is pretty extreme.
The Hephaestus is so-so at anti-armor, which is good enough up to cruisers (and its high DPS is good against hull). For cruisers and capital ships, I burn drive into them with the Proximity Charge Launchers, which makes pretty short work of capital ships. Me running in also ensures that I'm the one tanking the capital ships, so that the rest of my fleet can continue doing damage instead of being under attack, since the Onslaught is one of the best ships at soaking up damage.
It's pretty advanced, and definitely player-only, but I've found that it makes the best use of all the Onslaught's advantages, as a big wrecking ball diving into the heart of the enemy fleet.
Are there other s-mods like Expanded Mags or SO that drastically change how a ship plays?
I don't know if it's "drastic" but ITU is definitely needed for cruisers and capital ships, s-mod Advanced Turret Gyros is good for capital ships, and s-mod Armored Weapon Mounts is good for many ships since it increases their weapon rate of fire by 10% (increasing their damage output by 10%...and also their flux usage). Front shield conversion is awesome for some ships like the Aurora, and s-mod Extended Shields is also good for ships like the Medusa, etc., in closing off the engine gap.
Overall what are the strongest cruisers and destroyers I should be keeping an eye out for in .96?
I think hands down the strongest cruiser is the Gryphon, because of its sheer damage output. The build that I would recommend for it is Squall/Harpoon Pod/Harpoons, all linked, plus an HVD. Get Missile Autoloader (s-mod is fine), ITU for the HVD to help the Gryphon stay at the correct range, then load it up with defenses like Hardened Shields, lots of flux capacity, etc. Officer skills would be CE, TA, MS (elite), then I usually take Helms (elite) and FM. I don't bother with Systems Expertise because usually it's simply not needed, most battles are over before it gets used anyway, at least up to double [REDACTED].
The Gryphon is very much a glass cannon though so it can get overwhelmed easily, but if you have a pack of them they can clear out almost anything in the game. The fastest fleet I've found for killing enemy fleets is the aforementioned player Onslaught along with 8 Gryphons.
Other than that, there are plenty of decent cruisers, such as Eradicators, Champions, and Apogees. I haven't played much with the Mora but apparently carriers work really well with Derelict Operations, since for fighters, having a lot of them is more important than how strong each individual fighter is.
Vanshilar has a video on building Brawler LPs, which I'll look up. I haven't found a lot of these for sale--do I need to be fighting LP fleets to get them?
I think an SO fleet is a good way to start out, and a fleet of LP Brawlers is very easy to make. The LP markets reset their wares every 30 days or so, so I'll go to the LP markets (transponder off) once a month, buy any LP Brawlers I find, then go out looking for any LP fleets around it to kill to get more LP Brawlers. (Once you kill their fleets in the vicinity of their market, you'll need to wait awhile before using the market again, and hence you go to the market first.) You'll need to restore each LP Brawler after you get it to get rid of Ill-Advised Modifications, but it's only ~36k credits which is really cheap. So it's easy to gradually build up a fleet.
If you're adventurous, you can also go to the LP bases scattered throughout the sector, and again go to the base first to look for ships to buy before killing any fleets nearby.
HE weapons - Light Mortar and Light Autocannon - in most cases these are useless because of low hit strength against large ships' armor. Their only use is the early game for small ships to fight other small ships. I can safely sell them if I find enough good kinetic guns.
Think you mean Light Assault Gun but yeah, you'll probably be using something else. Keep 1 or 2 of them on hand in case you have no HE weapons whatsoever but I've never really found a use for them.
Kinetic PD - Light Machine Gun and LD Machine Gun - basically the same weapon, LMG is more OP efficient and LDMG is more slot efficient. Is there ever a reason to use these over a Vulcan? With elite PD they would be 500 range and extremely flux efficient. But I guess no ship has enough slots to put 30 of these forward-facing.
They're good for SO ships, in which case they're actually serving as anti-shield rather than PD. For example, they're useful on the LP Brawler.
Regular Kinetics - LAC, LDAC, Railgun, Light Needler - All of them look decent. Lots of discussion of how good LDAC is in this patch but even then I see lots of builds preferring railguns for range and accuracy. The Light Needler looks like a decent substitute for a Railgun, with more efficiency at the cost of accuracy. Light autocannon is the 700 range budget choice in terms of OP spent.
Yup. LDAC is more flux-efficient but has less range, so it depends on if you need more flux or range. LAC is less damage but better damage/OP so it's useful if you have lots of mounts but are tight on OP. Railgun has higher hit strength so it does more damage to hull, but it also is less flux-efficient, so it depends on if you want that extra hull damage. So each has their uses.
Generally speaking, though, if you're still collecting weapons, they're generally interchangeable, it won't matter that much.
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Topic: List of mechanics questions from a new player (Read 1369 times)