Print

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

[SCC]

We never saw 5 Conquests beat 5 ordos. Tragic.

[Vanshilar]

We never saw 5 Conquests beat 5 ordos. Tragic.

Clearly the Conquest needs to be buffed.

_{I'm laying low about the Conquest's abilities until I finish my playthrough and hope Alex doesn't notice how powerful it is.}

[SCC]

_{I'm laying low about the Conquest's abilities until I finish my playthrough and hope Alex doesn't notice how powerful it is.}

It has definitely felt subpar ever since 0.95, so I would like to know what is the secret ingredient to making it good again.

[Goumindong]

_{I'm laying low about the Conquest's abilities until I finish my playthrough and hope Alex doesn't notice how powerful it is.}

It has definitely felt subpar ever since 0.95, so I would like to know what is the secret ingredient to making it good again.

The conquest has DPS but not tank. So it cannot stand on its own. It’s fine/good as the single capital providing DPS in a cruiser fleet. It’s less good stacked but stacked ships also tend to only be good when you can guarantee a consistent fit and officer core for them. Which is maybe not reasonable for most playthroughs.

That is, flanked by a normal fleet a conquest probably does as well or better than an Onslaught. But hyper-optimized it may be worse.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

_{I'm laying low about the Conquest's abilities until I finish my playthrough and hope Alex doesn't notice how powerful it is.}

Half of Conquest is two large missile slots which have been nerfed about 4-7 times in last two patches(What was it - three Squall nerfs, EMR nerf, two Missile Specialization nerfs and a buff to Remnant PD?) It's weakest it's ever been, you're probably just getting too much noise from your flagship to even notice.

[Edit] Oh right I forgot about DMR missiles which can bypass its narrow shield and elite skill changes which affected ships with split weapons systems the most.

[FooF]

mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Conquests…

Truth be told, I haven’t used a Conquest this patch. With buffed HAG and Storm Needler, it might be able to also mount some other flux hungry weapons like a Heavy Blaster. Agreed with the above: it’s best as offensive support and struggles when counted on to hold the line. It’s very average in a lot of areas but I don’t think it’s “weak.” I just don’t think the endgame can be won by sustained firepower alone, which is what it excels at. You have to have some burst and/or decent defense to weather being swarmed.

[Killer of Fate]

raise it's shield efficiency from 1.4 to 1.2 as a start. That should probably fix most of its problems. Or not... No idea.

[Vanshilar]

It has definitely felt subpar ever since 0.95, so I would like to know what is the secret ingredient to making it good again.

It's been good since at least 0.96a (and probably before) when I started testing player fleets against double Ordos using the paradigm of player-controlled flagship Onslaught as center anchor + 2 Gryphons (or however many is needed for the player fleet to add up to ~200 DP) as side flankers + whatever ship is being tested. The best option, in terms of fastest battle completion time, was + 6 Gryphons (i.e flagship Onslaught + 8 Gryphons), but + 3 Conquests (i.e. flagship Onslaught + 2 Gryphons + 3 Conquests) was the second fastest, faster than + 3 Onslaughts, + 3 Legion XIVs, or pretty much anything else other than more Gryphons. No particular secret, other than maybe sticking a PD in the same weapon group to force autofire on; the weapons were Squall/Locust/dual Mjolnir/dual HVD/dual Harpoons. In 0.96a I used IR Autolance + s-mod Expanded Magazines, but now in 0.97a I'm experimenting with other weapons there as well.

Half of Conquest is two large missile slots which have been nerfed about 4-7 times in last two patches(What was it - three Squall nerfs, EMR nerf, two Missile Specialization nerfs and a buff to Remnant PD?) It's weakest it's ever been, you're probably just getting too much noise from your flagship to even notice.

No, Squalls are important but they only form a small part of the Conquest's damage, like roughly 15%. Mjolnir is the biggest damage dealer, and I use two of them. In fact the shield part of the two Mjolnirs' overall damage is higher than the Squall's shield damage, but the Mjolnir also provides a lot of armor/hull damage while the Squall provides little else. Each Mjolnir provides around 1.5x of the Squall's overall damage.

My flagship Onslaught actually took a heavy nerf, largely due to the PCL nerf. It used to fire at once per second and elite Missile Spec giving +50% fire rate, so the Onslaught with 4 of them used to fire them at the equivalent of 6 per second. It now fires at once every 2 seconds with eMS only giving +25% fire rate, so now the Onslaught fires at the equivalent of 2.5 per second. So I can no longer haphazardly charge in, nor assume that the PCL will kill all incoming Reapers. My overall battle DPS has dropped from around 1600-1800 DPS in 0.96a to around 1200-1500 DPS now, roughly 20% less overall battle DPS. And this is using Cybernetic Augmentation for 12% or 14% extra damage on the flagship and less damage taken (depending on if I'm putting the 4th point into elite EWM or Neural Link).

In 0.96a, the Gryphon was at roughly 430 DPS for 20 DP, the highest ratio I found for ships under AI control against double Ordos, while the Conquest was at around 800 DPS for 40 DP. Since 0.97a, the Conquest's DPS has actually gone up. In fact the Conquest is having so little trouble that I'm experimenting with putting Pulse Lasers or Heavy Blasters in the medium energy slot alongside the above weapons just to encourage the Conquests to move in closer so that they don't idle at long range so much. I don't know if it's the new Cybernetic Augmentation (because the DPS increase is a lot more than what's expected from just +6% damage increase) or just that the new enemy fleet deploy order actually makes things easier for the Conquest and other player ships in general. At any rate, nowadays this fleet relies more on the Conquests relative to the flagship Onslaught to steamroll through double Ordos than in 0.96a. Not sure if double Ordos has gotten easier for other ships as well, but it's easier at least for the Conquest.

It’s very average in a lot of areas but I don’t think it’s “weak.” I just don’t think the endgame can be won by sustained firepower alone, which is what it excels at. You have to have some burst and/or decent defense to weather being swarmed.

Well the firepower is so high that my fleet basically advances toward the enemy spawn point at the top of the map, meaning that even against Ordos it's killing enemy ships faster than they can march in. The Conquests use Harpoon Pods linked to the Squall/Locust, meaning they'll fire at the beginning of the battle, which is the most important time to burn through the initial enemy fleet as quickly as possible. That's the only time when my fleet (which is only 200 DP) is facing the entire 240 DP of the enemy fleet. After that, my fleet is only facing around 1/3 of the enemy fleet (so, around 80 DP's worth of enemy ships) at any given time, with the reinforcements still on their way to the front lines. So it's basically, burst firepower initially, then sustained firepower for the rest of the fight. I posted an example of this in 0.96a here; in 0.97a the Conquests are doing even better.

[BigBrainEnergy]

So yeah, seems like capital balance is pretty good! The only one that really needs to be scrutinized is the Astral.

[Sinigr]

raise it's shield efficiency from 1.4 to 1.2 as a start. That should probably fix most of its problems. Or not... No idea.

I think this is not enough.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

Well the firepower is so high that my fleet basically advances toward the enemy spawn point at the top of the map, meaning that even against Ordos it's killing enemy ships faster than they can march in. The Conquests use Harpoon Pods linked to the Squall/Locust, meaning they'll fire at the beginning of the battle, which is the most important time to burn through the initial enemy fleet as quickly as possible. That's the only time when my fleet (which is only 200 DP) is facing the entire 240 DP of the enemy fleet. After that, my fleet is only facing around 1/3 of the enemy fleet (so, around 80 DP's worth of enemy ships) at any given time, with the reinforcements still on their way to the front lines.

FYI, I have never seen anyone else's fleet do it. Even when Draba posts his own minmaxed comps which take 5 Ordo at a time this doesn't happen. So again let me reiterate the point that your specific fleet composition is completely bonkers and you should be extremely careful when trying to use it as basis for balance changes.

[Vanshilar]

FYI, I have never seen anyone else's fleet do it. Even when Draba posts his own minmaxed comps which take 5 Ordo at a time this doesn't happen. So again let me reiterate the point that your specific fleet composition is completely bonkers and you should be extremely careful when trying to use it as basis for balance changes.

Uh, so you're saying that because you weren't aware of a combat strategy, therefore someone else should be "extremely careful" about considering it in balance discussions? I don't see why everyone else's opinions about balance should revolve around your own knowledge or ignorance of the different possible combat strategies in Starsector.

I've been posting about this way of defeating [REDACTED] fleets for literally years. All of my ship comparison testing is done this way, because it's the most effective way I know of currently. (In other words, it puts all the ships being tested in the best possible light.)  This is before I started using my current flagship Onslaught + 2 Gryphons + "other" paradigm. So it can be done with all sorts of different ships. My own 5-Ordos video was based on this exact strategy, done on the first try, and was the fastest completion posted by a significant margin. Whatever strategies other players use for their multi-Ordos videos is up to them. They're more about being able to say "yes I did it" than serving a practical purpose anyway, since there's no real reason to go beyond about 3 Ordos depending on your fleet, and the posters have to do some sort of FP shenanigans (inflate their fleet in terms of FP) in order to get that many Ordos fleets to be willing to fight them in the first place.

Different posters have posted about doing this concept of surrounding the enemy fleet so that you can focus all your fire on a few enemy ships in relative safety, since they're basically streaming in a few at a time; in fact there's a military term for this that someone else uses on the forums (that I only know because I didn't know what it was and had to Google it, but I forgot the term now). If you're not aware of this approach to combat in Starsector or other games, then it makes your own opinions about combat balance highly suspect. This is a pretty basic concept in a lot of these types of games.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

I don't see why everyone else's opinions about balance should revolve around your own knowledge or ignorance of the different possible combat strategies in Starsector. (...) I've been posting about this way of defeating [REDACTED] fleets for literally years.

Yes, that's exactly my point. You've been doing the same one thing for years and apparently can't comprehend that most other people don't.

All of my ship comparison testing is done this way, because it's the most effective way I know of currently. (In other words, it puts all the ships being tested in the best possible light.)

No, actually, putting ships in best possible scenario is the worst way to rate them because it will obfuscate their shortcomings.

[Goumindong]

1) he doesn’t seem to be putting these ships in the best possible scenario

2) he isn’t doing anything more outlandish than other posters do when they kill 5 ordos with 3 onslaught and escort destroyers.

Indeed his post seems like a perfect refutation of the idea that the conquest is “bad” or that it’s firepower isn’t enough to make it good (or that it has bad firepower).

[Vanshilar]

Yes, that's exactly my point. You've been doing the same one thing for years and apparently can't comprehend that most other people don't.

Your point is that...you don't understand combat strategies well enough and that therefore other people's sense of balance should be based on that? I was pointing out that "I didn't know about this concept and therefore your sense of balance shouldn't be based on it" is a bad argument and you're actually doubling down on this position? You're basing the validity of other people's opinions of ship balance based on what you yourself don't understand about combat strategies?

No, actually, putting ships in best possible scenario is the worst way to rate them because it will obfuscate their shortcomings.

The whole point of figuring out good ship loadouts, fleet compositions, combat strategies, etc. is to maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. Nobody cares about how bad a shield-shunted Paragon is (except for meme purposes) or what happens if you don't put any missiles on a Gryphon (or a Pegasus). Ship balance isn't based around how bad your fleet is, it's based on how good you can make it. It's not about putting ships in the best possible scenario (which would be more like sic them against a Kite), it's about how to use them the most effectively. This is the most effective way I know of to kill enemy fleets, and that's why my testing is done in this way. Until someone posts a better way to handle combat, I don't see why you would choose a different, less-effective approach toward killing enemy fleets in evaluating different ships.