Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[doll]

And the range of all its weapons is high enough to threaten any sort of typical high tech ship or a frigate that enters its perimeter. And if it dares to venture further to try to damage the Onslaught, it will take it so long to retreat from its firing range, that it will take damage.

But that's just the thing. Unlike most other ships, diving it's guns doesn't require you to then slowly emerge out the other direction. You just keep going and break through to the other side. And whether it does so intentionally or not, the AI also does this. I can let a couple ships fight an onslaught and I know that a few of them are going to get around behind it and kill it.
This is precisely my problem with the onslaught. I'm sure if you set up a kill corridor for it it's plenty efficient (though it's dissip/DP isn't that great, at least it has good guns) but against anything but the lobotomized remnants and stationary (or near stationary) targets, the onslaught does not get given those chances. I've never seen an onslaught kill it's weight in anything smaller than capitals (though I don't field my own onslaughts either).

Have you ever tried to kill an Onslaught with like a Fury? Or maybe just a frigate or a destroyer? It's a nightmare.

It's really not. With a frigate is a bit much, sure, unless it's one of the superfrigates. But many of the destroyers and like half the warship cruisers (the other half are too slow to make the dive) can just go around behind it and duel with it's rear guns and have a reasonable chance at success. The AI onslaught loadout can not defend itself from ass-missiles.

If you are having trouble utilising your capital ships

I've never had trouble finding a blackmarket to buy them.

You can also try protecting your ship with escorts.

For the price of onslaught + escorts, I could just have good ships. They might even be able to turn around.
In practical terms, the maximum firepower an onslaught can use in most engagements is 2-3 heavy ballistics aimed at different targets backed by 600 base dissip and the missile slots which have to be fired from well outside of PD max range. For upwards of 40 DP (since it needs to be babied), that's really quite a bad deal. It's also a big static vulnerability that can't take care of itself.

[Wyvern]

It's pretty clear that that's talking about the back of the onslaught i.e. the part of it that's in combat. You spend 40DP on a ship and only 4 medium mounts can fire (and they receive fire without a shield).

As a largely-disinterested third party, that was not clear at all.

Also, it's wrong. An Onslaught should always be deployed with at least one, if not two or three maneuverability boosts (helmsmanship, elite impact mitigation, auxiliary thrusters), which easily covers that particular weakness against anything short of phase frigates or pather SO swarms.

And then it's wrong again because ships don't exist on their own - you can assign ships to an escort task, keeping the Onslaught's rear arc free-enough that things can't just camp there and giving a chance to at least bring its broadside to bear.

And then it's wrong a third time because actually, there are anywhere from two to eight medium mounts that can fire at targets behind the ship, depending. If you mounted rockets or torpedos, and the enemy ship is relatively small and close, then only the two rear-most ballistic turrets can fire on it. Against larger ships, the rear-side turrets get into play. And, of course, homing missiles; a pair of AMSRMs on an Onslaught can make short work of sneaky little frigates, if you're genuinely having issues with those.

Oh, and the omni shield conversion hullmod exists and is good value on the Onslaught, too.

That all said? I'm not much a fan of the Onslaught myself. But claiming its value is limited to four mediums and no shield is absolutely the sort of thing that's going to get you called out.

[Thaago]

I find it surprising that people consider the onslaught weak - there have been several recent videos of them performing extremely well, including in the multi-ordo endurance killfests where they don't mount missiles at all. Here's one by draba for example vs 6 ordos: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=29311.0

In terms of a firepower comparison between Conquest and Onslaught: Tldr: the difference is not very large in terms of gun offense.

On the one hand, the Conquest has much more dissipation. On the other hand, it doesn't have the mounts to use that dissipation with high efficiency, so the difference isn't as large as it first appears. Gauss/Mjolnir/HVD/Mauler/Ion beams are the most common offensive weapons and they do a great job combined with Conquest mobility, but they aren't particularly efficient.

The onslaught otoh doesn't have the dissipation, but it does have the mounts, and I don't just mean the larges. It has 5 converging mediums (depending on arc, that's 5 forward but there are different numbers on the sides) and smalls that can potentially be range boosted (though I'm not 100% sold on the value of that). Even with some of those weapons as points defense, it can afford to use higher efficiency weapons than the Conquest can. Consider for example an HAC/Heph main armament - the onslaught will be firing with .9 f/d efficiency (or less considering tpcs are .6, but they miss a lot so I'm not sure what their accuracy adjusted efficiency is). This is kind of a 'middle' efficiency onslaught build, as it could be using higher.

A conquest going mjolinirs + HVD (brought up earlier) will be firing at 1.14 f/d. 1.26 f/d with an ion beam. The ratio of Conquest offensive efficiency to Onslaught offensive efficiency (1.14/.9=1.27) is really not far off from the ratio of flux between a Conquest (~1800 dissipation depending on build) and an Onslaught (~1400 dissipation depending on build): 1.29. Similarly with capacity: 17k vs 20k is in the Conquest's favor for offensive guns by raw number, but not if it is using lower efficiency weapons.

These are estimated numbers that depend heavily on build, so there is some ymmv, but I think the general point of 'Conquest can't use its dissipation as efficiently' holds. As a slight pre-empt of 'why don't conquests use hac/heph too?': they can but because they don't have a many medium mounts their ratio of kinetic:HE would be out of whack. Plus in that case they have to spend less on vents but still don't have more firepower, because they are capped at 2 large 2 mediums (+ a medium energy). It doesn't leverage the high dissipation that it pays so much for in terms of shield efficiency.

I'm not saying Conquests are bad btw - they are good ships and far, far more mobile than Onslaughts. Just also squishier and with very different optimal loadouts in terms of types of guns that means that their apparent firepower advantage from dissipation isn't accurate.

[MN64]

I feel like most of the arguments saying the Onslaught is bad are trying to shoe horn it into a 1v1 scenario against a SO Hyperion or turbo min maxed uber destroyer which is really silly.  If you have your Onslaught out on its own in the middle of nowhere during an actual fight you are doing it wrong.  The ship is designed to be used as an anchor point for a line of ships to shoot at the other line of ships so basing how good it is on a simulation match where it is alone is just kind of stupid.  I mean if a ship is bad because it loses a 1v1 to a super frigate/destroyer then i guess every single ship in the game is bad.  I mean you can just circle around a paragon in a turbo minmax build too so i guess its worthless too?  All of the weaknesses that the Onslaught has a weaknesses that pretty much all of the other capitals and most of the cruisers do too.

The Onslaught is great for what it does and does it well.  Its not bad because it loses against things designed to hard counter it.  A proper fleet is made up of multiple ships with multiple roles to cover eachother.  Sure the big slow capitals cant turn around to protect their tailpipes but that is what escort package destroyers are for.  They protect the capital while the capital protects them.

[Selfcontrol]

Imo, the base Onslaught is fine. I do think the XIV version should have its DP bump to 45 though.

Also, it's wrong. An Onslaught should always be deployed with at least one, if not two or three maneuverability boosts (helmsmanship, elite impact mitigation, auxiliary thrusters), which easily covers that particular weakness against anything short of phase frigates or pather SO swarms.

Honestly, Elite Impact Mitigation is more then enough if your fleet has some escort for the Onslaught.

[Thaago]

I'm currently a fan of S mod Auxiliary Thrusters on Dominators, though I haven't tried it on an Onslaught in actual game. I had one with an Elite Helmsmanship officer and the thing could spin like a top when the guns were off!

[mr. domain]

onslaught is only OP when it's shunted, player-piloted, and has either 4 PCL's or 4 jackhammers [or hammer pods... or reapers... or...]
y'know what else is OP?

* shunted legion
* shunted legion 14
* fusoreina from UAF
* locomotive from HMI
* gramada from xhan empire
* arsenal from DEX
* a zigg flown by... anyone that has played longer than a week
I've even seen a guy shunt a paragon and slap. disregard shields. acquire fearless player pilot behavior that is all

I love how you want to prove how not op Onslaught is by listing a bunch of stuff that doesn't even exist. I mean, what the *** is a Ziggurat?

.

This post brought to you by COMSEC

[Megas]

If Onslaughts are commonly shown in endgame meta fleets, it probably is one of the stronger (power per DP) ships in the game.

Also, whenever the XIV version is available, it is always taken over the standard version, except maybe Legion because of the mounts.

[Killer of Fate]

I'm currently a fan of S mod Auxiliary Thrusters on Dominators, though I haven't tried it on an Onslaught in actual game. I had one with an Elite Helmsmanship officer and the thing could spin like a top when the guns were off!

as someone who used to do Helmsmanship+ on a Paragon to make it less slow, and also did auxiliary thrusters hullmod, I could imagine it being pretty powerful on a capital ship in need of mobility. Though in order to fully benefit from the 0-flux boost you have to pilot the ship yourself. Otherwise, it'll hold its shield up too much, even when protecting itself against something as harmless as salamanders.

[Killer of Fate]

If Onslaughts are commonly shown in endgame meta fleets, it probably is one of the stronger (power per DP) ships in the game.

Also, whenever the XIV version is available, it is always taken over the standard version, except maybe Legion because of the mounts.

I feel like the reason they show up so much is cause of XIV. XIV is a dumb idea. It should be made dumber to somehow prevent players from just spamming it. Maybe make it so you can't repair it (and can't manufacture it), unless randomly by using Hull Restoration skill? Would actually give Hull Restoration some interesting late game mechanics of allowing you to use potent late game ships. Currently sceptical about modern skill changes. Cybernetic Augmentation feels now less like Deus Ex and more like the Borg with how it apparently links you with others to boost your performance. Just cause you're wearing a toaster on your brain, doesn't mean you have to lose your individuality.

But also one of the reasons why XIV is so common is cause money doesn't mean anything. If we fix the economy problem of Starsector by balancing the credits mechanics, XIV will be nerfed indirectly. But the cost of a XIV variant should be high... Currently it's...1.75 which is fine. But if we wanted to make the player suffer. Or we just reduced the cost of ships, cause we increased the cost of something else, like weapons or crew. Then it would be 2.0 cost of the original variant. Which, eh... Never mind, none of this is real anyway.

[Phenir]

I'd rather the XIV onslaught get mounts changed than dp bumped, similar to legion. Maybe even in the same way, swap the 4 missile mounts for med ballistic and swap the large ballistics for large missiles, or swap out the tpcs for a modular slot (large energy/hybrid?) or different built in.

[Zenaria]

IMO Onslaught being too powerful could come from

- they're good match against late game fleet like ordo.
everyone try to proof how good their fleet are by number of ordo that they can handle. right ?
and my pure midline fleet struggle so hard cuz they outclass me in every aspect (firepower , speed , quality)

- they build simple.
shoot everything at your front. it can hardly go wrong or misposition like high tech.

- Stat bloat
20k hp 1.5k+ armor Heavy integration and 360 OP i don't think anyone having a hardtime try to fit their Onslaught
combine with Ordnance Expertise you can hardly say onslaught have a bad flux.
if only legion can have 360 OP too.

- Exploit
Surely Onslaught have a big weakness at its arse but it only when you fight against it.
when player using them they simply erase this by hugging corner and made a firing line.
i saw that happen a lot

judge by how popular Onslaught are. it already proof how good it's

how to nerf ?
remove Heavy ballistic integration should be enough.
reduce flexibility of weapon choice would do a trick.

[Selfcontrol]

and my pure midline fleet struggle so hard cuz they outclass me in every aspect (firepower , speed , quality)

I'm curious what was your fleet composition and/or how you built your ships ? 2 playthroughs ago, I did a pure midline fleet with only 2 capitals (Conquests) and then a decent mix or cruisers and destroyers and single or double Ordos weren't hard at all.

- they build simple.
shoot everything at your front. it can hardly go wrong or misposition like high tech.

I don't agree. Many capital ships are quite easy to build, including the Paragon and the Odyssey. They are fairly intuitive ships to build. The Odyssey is a bit harder, but not by much.

High Tech cruisers require a bit more thought than a Dominator, but then we have Eradicators which are not easy to build at all at a first glance imo.

how to nerf ?
remove Heavy ballistic integration should be enough.
reduce flexibility of weapon choice would do a trick.

I still don't understand why the Onslaught should be nerfed (at least why its stats/mounts should be nerfed). I've yet to see proofs that it outperforms other 40 DP capitals by a significant margin to warrant a nerf (unlike Omens which definitely deserve a nerf to their DP ).

[Goumindong]

A conquest going mjolinirs + HVD (brought up earlier) will be firing at 1.14 f/d. 1.26 f/d with an ion beam. The ratio of Conquest offensive efficiency to Onslaught offensive efficiency (1.14/.9=1.27) is really not far off from the ratio of flux between a Conquest

This isn’t quite right. While a Mjolnir is 1.25 flux/dmg Vs shield(1.07 with the HVD). And a HAG + Mark IX are .84 flux dmg Vs shields. The HAG + Mark IX Vs 50 armor hull = 1.25 flux/dmg while the Mjolnir is 1.44. And getting through hull matters.

And this is assuming that HAG and Mark IX are perfectly accurate with no recoil like the Mjolnir is.

Like… the Odyssey has more oomph than the onslaught simply with two plasma cannons and it’s got 200 less flux than the Conquest.


Edit: aside from the TPC. Like. So much of the onslaughts power is in the TPC.

[Axisoflint]

onslaught is only OP when it's shunted, player-piloted, and has either 4 PCL's or 4 jackhammers [or hammer pods... or reapers... or...]
y'know what else is OP?

* shunted legion
* shunted legion 14
* fusoreina from UAF
* locomotive from HMI
* gramada from xhan empire
* arsenal from DEX
* a zigg flown by... anyone that has played longer than a week
I've even seen a guy shunt a paragon and slap. disregard shields. acquire fearless player pilot behavior that is all

I love how you want to prove how not op Onslaught is by listing a bunch of stuff that doesn't even exist. I mean, what the *** is a Ziggurat?

If it doesn't exist, how did you know to call it a Ziggurat when they only said Zigg? CONSPIRACY???!!!?