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[Cryovolcanic]

@eert - that sounds really tedious to me, dude. At that point I'd rather just use console commands and save the extra hour.

I'm level 13 in my current SD/DO playthrough. Some observations from me

1- Much prefer starting SD than going DO first as I have in the past. The 4 officer skills help a lot and the -20% DP is guaranteed
2- SD/DO Grendel doesn't seem special so far. Have an SO ACG/HMG build and a 1000 range HVD/Mauler build, neither is particularly special
3- LP Brawler is awesome even with 5dmods. Using 4 of them still
4- The mainstay of the fleet is SD/DO SO Eagles with Converted Hangar. Using all the cheese on this ship. With 2x speed they kill things fast and are reasonably tanky. 3x HMG, Heavy Blaster, Phase Lance, Ion Cannon is the build. No s-mods yet. I'm looking for XIV Eagles but those are hard to find--hoping to spawn some Heg fleets I can kill eventually.

Overall, SO pairs nicely with SD (this is my first time really using SO). The Ordnance Expertise is doubled, the Helmsmanship bonus stacks with the SO speed boost, and Combat Endurance mitigates the PPT drain somewhat. Damage Control's -25% hull damage synergizes with Reinforced Bulkheads, IMO a must-have for DO builds. So everything's contributing somehow. And the CH DP increase is reduced by SD/DO (but not by a huge amount).

To Vanshilar's point, how good SD is depends on how well a ship can use its 4 skills. Since it combines so well with SO, I'd say that any good SO ship is probably a good SD ship. I'm leaning on Eagles so far because the 700 base dissipation is awesome when doubled, and the awkward mounts are actually perfect for SO. The 270, 0.8 shield is just protective enough to dive into swarms and do OK. Auroras might be better but I just found my first one.

[Thaago]

Between the two, derelict ops has been proven useful by capn hector when beating down insane challenges like 5 ordos...

This is true, though it does relate to a pet peeve of mine when it comes to the vast majority of derelict ops videos, builds: somehow every ship has the perfect number of D mods and, sometimes depending on the video, those D mods impact the function of the ships the least for whatever they are designed to do. The videos are fun and impressive, but all the challenge fleets are made with console commands (so the people doing them can work on the challenge, not grind out different fleets over and over).

For DO, this leads to fleets that are honestly better than what could happen in a real game in any reasonable timescale. It's far harder to get the perfect set of D mods than it is to just hit the restore button when something goes wrong! Especially because the ships typically also have S mods - if the player takes a loss and the "wrong" D mods pops up, there is not realistic way to get the ship back to "perfect" (IE the ideal set/number of D mods) condition.

So I'm not really sure its fair to be comparing any skill to the performance of DO from videos where its clear that the skill is being used in a way that is almost impossible in vanilla. Vanshillar's testing below where they are generated with a random set is a much better way of doing that, but even then that is the "right" number of D mods which would be very tedious to do in a real game.

Put every crew saving hullmod on the ship you want to select d-mods for. Remove all weapons from the ship. Find a pirate corsair. Save. Fight the corsair only deploying the ship to be destroyed, and a ship you pilot that can kill said ship. Kill it, kill the pirates, recover and check the d-mods. If you got one that you wanted, save and repeat. If you didn't, reload.

It shouldn't take more than an hour using this method for an entire fleet. This is also the method used for getting ideal officers. You just max out their XP, save, and then level up.

I don't consider a method that requires save scumming as an integral part of its strategy to be any more valid in terms of vanilla balance than using console commands. This isn't loading a save to try a fight again, its using save/load to go around game mechanics. Same with officers - not to mention the fact that during the whole time they are level 1 and gaining experience they are underpowered.

There's nothing wrong with using console commands to build a fleet and having fun with it - single player game after all, the whole point is to have fun and try stuff - but the 'vanilla' experience shouldn't be balanced around it.

Also, I highly doubt the above method could work in an hour for a full DO fleet. We're talking 20+ ships with multiple deaths per ship, even before reloads! That's going to be, what, 100 fights? 200 fights? And finding somewhere around 30-50 enemy fleets to punch as well, which is going to require multiple systems.

[PixiCode]

Also, I highly doubt the above method could work in an hour for a full DO fleet. We're talking 20+ ships with multiple deaths per ship, even before reloads! That's going to be, what, 100 fights? 200 fights? And finding somewhere around 30-50 enemy fleets to punch as well, which is going to require multiple systems.

Actually with the advent of colony crisis we now have many big fleets to cause many deaths of your ships, funny enough. I'm not someone who likes reloading to get D-mods, but I'm able to naturally accrue 4-5 d-mods on most of my ships pretty naturally thanks to colony threat dealings. Doubly so when you can purchase ships with many d-mods or salvage them from the enemy/derelicts!

The spoiler below is apparently slightly inaccurate info, but I left it to keep the thread sensible since people responded to it. It's clarified in subsequent posts.

Spoiler

But yeah trying to create a new fleet that you want immediately, and with 4-5 dmods, can be annoying. This may sound really funny, but you could order production at your colony and not use any nanoforge. IIRC you can just have several Heavy Industries that help stack personal request production value, then also use that one skill that increases that value as well. You'll naturally get what, 3-5 D-mods or something per ship created?

[close]

[Cryovolcanic]

@Pixicode - your idea of producing dmods sounds interesting, how do you do this? If you don't upgrade to Orbital Works and you remove the nanoforge, you can get ships with dmods?

[Thaago]

Yup! Also in the fleet doctrine page you can turn quality down at the same time. That's a good method to get D mods quickly, they just won't be guaranteed to be the ones you want. Which, honestly, is fine.

I hadn't considered the colony crisis fleets - yeah that helps to get your own fleet blown up faster

[Cryovolcanic]

Interesting--can blueprints for Eagle XIV be looted from the Hegemony?

[PixiCode]

Yup! Also in the fleet doctrine page you can turn quality down at the same time. That's a good method to get D mods quickly, they just won't be guaranteed to be the ones you want. Which, honestly, is fine.

I hadn't considered the colony crisis fleets - yeah that helps to get your own fleet blown up faster

Oh man, actually, I was just testing it in my save... it appears like all ships you produce via personal request are nearly pristine, even when I removed the nanoforge and set quality to 1. That's... uh. I didn't expect this...

[SCC]

Custom order ships are made with the quality equivalent to if you had maxed out ship quality in the doctrine.

[PixiCode]

Custom order ships are made with the quality equivalent to if you had maxed out ship quality in the doctrine.

Yeah this checks out, with just an orbital works I get 0-1 d-mods per ship from the looks of it, even with quality set to 1. Kinda unfortunate, but it makes sense I suppose. Edit: just got a venture with 2 d-mods. Meh, well, this method at least helps.

So, Shade, to answer your question;



Do not use an orbital works or a nanoforge. Use Alpha Cores and build multiple heavy industries. This will maximize the d-mods of your ships.

[Thaago]

Whoops! My bad! Thanks for the correction.

[Billhartnell]

Is the main benefit of SD the ability to spam LP Brawlers without wasting officers on them? They punch well above their DP cost, and Combat Endurance shores up their main weakness.

[Megas]

Interesting--can blueprints for Eagle XIV be looted from the Hegemony?

Individual XIV blueprints can be raided for, except Legion XIV.  Raid Raesvelg for them, and standard Legion.  For Legion XIV, pay your story point to the historian when he offers that.

[Cryovolcanic]

Thanks Megas.

@Vanshilar - where do you find LP Brawlers in the early game? I almost never see them for sale in Chalcedon and Epiphany. When I defeat LP fleets, recovering the Brawlers (if they are even available) almost always cost story points.

Only place I've found to buy 2-3 LP Brawlers at once are LP bases in deep space.

[Vanshilar]

Put every crew saving hullmod on the ship you want to select d-mods for. Remove all weapons from the ship. Find a pirate corsair. Save. Fight the corsair only deploying the ship to be destroyed, and a ship you pilot that can kill said ship. Kill it, kill the pirates, recover and check the d-mods. If you got one that you wanted, save and repeat. If you didn't, reload.

It shouldn't take more than an hour using this method for an entire fleet. This is also the method used for getting ideal officers. You just max out their XP, save, and then level up.

It's not quite that simple. If you are trying to pick the "best" (i.e. affects the ship the least) 5 dmods out of 12, assuming you get 1 dmod per fight, on the first one you have a 5/12 chance of getting one that's okay. But when going for the 4th one, you have a 2 in 9 chance, and for the 5th on, you have a 1 in 8 chance. So to get the perfect 5 dmods, it's basically (5/12) * (4/11) * (3/10) * (2/9) * (1/8) = 120/95040 or 1/792. So on average you'd have to fight 792 times to get the right combination of 5 dmods. And do that for every ship in your fleet.

I find that it's relatively easy to get 1 or 2 dmods that you want, but beyond that, it's basically not practical. And just getting the 2nd one for your whole fleet takes a bit of effort. Anything beyond that will basically exist only because of the Console Commands mod or direct savefile editing.

Incidentally, where I found DO to have the greatest benefit is around 2-3 dmods. You can usually find 1-2 dmods that don't affect the ship that much. But beyond that, most of the dmods will really hurt the ship somehow, and then it becomes not that useful.

Is the main benefit of SD the ability to spam LP Brawlers without wasting officers on them? They punch well above their DP cost, and Combat Endurance shores up their main weakness.

SD is useful in the early game in general, when you don't have officers built up. It's just that LP Brawlers work pretty well even without officers, so SD makes them work even better.

@Vanshilar - where do you find LP Brawlers in the early game? I almost never see them for sale in Chalcedon and Epiphany. When I defeat LP fleets, recovering the Brawlers (if they are even available) almost always cost story points.

Only place I've found to buy 2-3 LP Brawlers at once are LP bases in deep space.

There is usually at least 1-3 patrol fleets with LP Brawlers near their planets, plus I check the planets each month. The markets refresh their wares after 30 days. So I basically go in to check the market first, then I search nearby for the patrol fleets (since after I kill their patrol fleets, the market may not let me back in for a while). Yes if there are any hidden bases nearby I'll look at those too.