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[TheFreind]

I never mentioned anything about strapping dragonfires on an Astral but you called the Odysseys shield strong which is blatantly false. For comparison the Onslaught has a slightly stronger shield with 1.0 efficiency and 17000 capacity, the Odyssey has 15000 capacity and 1.0 efficiency. The Astrals shield is significantly stronger than the Odyssey with its 0.6 shield efficiency easily making up for the 3000 capacity difference.

Hypershunt fights aren't a good benchmark since you don't fight a well balanced fleet compared to double Ordo. Sustainability isn't needed for fighting the Tesseracts so the ammo problems aren't noticeable and the dragonfires will only be useful for the first phase anyway.

Ah, good point. That's a big difference in shield efficiency. The Astral is too big to sink with anything less than an overwhelming assault. Still, tanking shots with the Astral is risky business. Any Radiant that jumps an Astral is going to kill it. Meanwhile, the Odyssey can simply skirt away. If it feels like the pressure is too much, it'll turn around and run. Or it wins cost-efficient flux wars and dart back in when the opponent foolishly vents (or hovers too high of a flux).

The shields are a very important factor for my Odyssey because I reason that it has enough firepower to eliminate anything it wants to, especially with support from allied fleets in softening an enemy. Therefore, get stronger shields so it can "dive" deeper into the enemy line and weather more fire so it can eliminate whatever I need it to. For clarity sake I am trying out the new Cybernetic enhancements tech capstone with heavy emphasis on personal, elite combat skills. I am putting...
Field Modulation + Systems Expertise + Hardened Shields + Cybernetics + Ordinance Expertise + The technology skill for extra vents.
15% + 10% + 20% + 8% (8 personal skills) + 3000? flux

Granted, I'm fudging a lot of math instead of simply opening up the game and posting a screenshot. Point is, you have 25,000 Flux + 2500 Dissipation + ~0.6 Flux efficiency. That's a pretty damn good shield, especially since half the time you're behind an enemy and you may as well not need a shield to begin with. I don't need it to go toe-to-toe with battleships because with these stats I'll blow everything Cruiser sized or below out of the water. I'm a killer whale on the hunt for there is nothing that can stop me. Everything is easy meat, just come back to the capitals after their escorts have been picked off. And don't tell me you're optimizing your Onslaught for its shield value.

I raised the point that the Odyssey has great shields. It does in relation to everything else (with the exception of other capitals.) The important part is that the shields are great for providing a screen for Dragonfires to fire. It's big and wide and the ship is close enough that it's more or less priming when ontop of the Odyssey. it's a guaranteed hit. That's why I believe the Odyssey is one of the best Dragonfire ships.

Perhaps you're right on the benchmarking. I'll let you know how it fairs in a double Ordo since extremely long fights will definitely take all of the missiles from the Dragonfire. At the end of the day, it's an Odyssey with plasma cannons. I don't have a unicorn stashed in it.

[Thaago]

In terms of dragonfire: I don't find that they do soft flux to matter much. If the enemy decides to hold fire to bleed off 4k soft flux then they aren't firing 4k flux at me.

[nathan67003]

Hell you mean, using a weapon unironically? How the f does one use a weapon ironically?

[Killer of Fate]

In terms of dragonfire: I don't find that they do soft flux to matter much. If the enemy decides to hold fire to bleed off 4k soft flux then they aren't firing 4k flux at me.

you pay 6 op to make your opponent pretend they missed 5.5 blaster shots? Best case scenario. Cause most often shields are like 0.5 for Remnants. Or 0.8 on average I would guess...
I mean, fair.

[Grievous69]

If a single Dragonfire is fired on an enemy without any other supporting fire, that's on you. You can't reasonably expect that a single missile does everything.

[Killer of Fate]

If a single Dragonfire is fired on an enemy without any other supporting fire, that's on you. You can't reasonably expect that a single missile does everything.

long response

Spoiler

good argument, but the thing is that Dragon just doesn't feel specialised enough. It's anti-armour damage is too low, it's shield damage is too negligible. Its ammo is too small. Its speed is too small (though against larger ships its completely fine). Its health feels too low.

All of this is neglected by spam, but it shouldn't be spammed. The ships that spam it are capable of helping it achieve its objective. But that isn't how missiles should work.

Missiles should be specialist in nature so that they act as spice to a dish. Otherwise they become uncounterable. This is why DEM are kinda like fighters and phase ships of the game, might have already said this before, unless I didn't finish that comment. They exist in a limbo state of being either useless or game-breaking.

You can't counter them, you counter them by ignoring them, or by watching them counter themselves. The way they deal damage is too generalist and reliable for a missile. So, they must be nerfed in alternative aspects. These alternative aspects make them subpar to other missile launchers, because they compete for the same niche, but with tools that the game treats as "must be inferior to prevent game balancing issues".

Give Dragon more ammo, it becomes stupid. You just toss it constantly and keeps beaming, give Gorgon more ammo. It just keeps beaming. Nothing short of extreme point defence or shields will negate them. Because otherwise they're guided, manoeuvrable, deal fair damage against all three types of durability in their wide niche (Gorgon anti-frigate/destroyer, Dragon anti-cruiser/capital ship). So, they must be nerfed in alternative aspects.

I think??? I guess that's my theorem.

Squall has weaknesses, no anti-armour or anti-hull damage, in the past it had that as well as dealt EMP, it was nerfed. Slightly too much in my opinion. But whatever. Now it definitely demonstrates a missile concept. A slightly bought down that is. Hurricane splits, so its hit-strength isn't as high, and it is more vulnerable to point defence. Locust anti-shield inability and low hit-strength, as well as extremely vulnerability to flak cannons makes it ineffective at most roles. Cyclones are unguided, so they are only good against slow or cornered targets. They need to be fired at a close range. And their anti-shield damage isn't that high per value either. Sabots are sabots... Whatever...

Dragon. What is Dragon's weakness? It's pin-point aim. It's durable, somewhat. It can fire from behind allied ships, so it can be invulnerable. It's guided. It's slow? Makes medium range only, I guess. That's the nerf. That as well as low ammo and the general nature of beams. But how do you make up for the general nature of beams? Via concentration.

If DEM missiles are concentrated, they become unstoppable towards their target niche and just delete it. Concentrating Squalls does no damage, and they need to be supported by an alternative aspect. Concentrated Hurricane may do nothing, they need to be supported by an alternative aspect. Locust may do nothing, it is a secondary aspect.

Dragon and Gorgon are their full aspect. They have a job, they need to fulfil it. If they do not fulfil that job, then they fail. But if they do, they simply win. Most missiles don't work like that. If you miss a reaper, it was cheap. And you have 10 more of them. And they usually made an enemy move. And 2 of them are enough to kill a freaking Dominator. If you miss a Dragon, it's a race against time. Because it needs to be concentrated to fulfil its job.

You can even see this in Persean League fleet design. They have nothing except DEM. Expanded Missile Racks and ECCM. And then just DEM spam. Because with DEM it's all or nothing.

[close]

[Hiruma Kai]

In terms of dragonfire: I don't find that they do soft flux to matter much. If the enemy decides to hold fire to bleed off 4k soft flux then they aren't firing 4k flux at me.

you pay 6 op to make your opponent pretend they missed 5.5 blaster shots? Best case scenario. Cause most often shields are like 0.5 for Remnants. Or 0.8 on average I would guess...
I mean, fair.

If you're including bonuses from skills and CR to get to 0.5 efficiency, you really should apply it to both offense and defense.  Baseline Remnant shield efficiency is 0.6.  Alpha cores get Field Modulation and 100% CR for 0.6*0.85*0.9=0.459 efficiency.  Beta and Gamma only get Combat Endurance (i.e. 100% CR) for 0.6*0.9=0.54 efficiency.

Missiles in a player fleet will often benefit from 100% CR, Elite Missile Specialization, Target Analysis, and Tactical drills or Cybernetic Augmentation (assume +5% either way).  Against a cruiser, this would be  (1+0.1+0.1+0.05)*1.15 = 1.43.

For a Dragonfire, this means 4000*1.43*0.459=2625 net soft flux vs a Brilliant or Apex.  Or an effective overall shield efficiency of 0.65 when both sets of skills are taken into account.  And DEMs clearly were balanced with Missile Specialization in mind given every single Persean League officer has the skill.

So, 5.5 Heavy Blaster shots (no shield efficiency or skills), or in the case of a typical player vs Remnant fight, 3.6 Heavy Blaster shots or 4.8 Plasma cannon projectiles can be the difference between you overloading, or them overloading.  Especially when it is done in 1 seconds instead of 3-4 seconds.  It is a flux race, and being able to keep the enemy frozen in place for 3-4 seconds can be enough to win that race.  Although, to be honest, best case scenario is you prevent a flux dump of an Auto-pulse Laser on a Brilliant with its 0.83 flux efficiency rather than a Heavy Blaster's 1.44 efficiency on an Apex.  2625 flux is 3162 hard flux shield damage from an Auto-Pulse Laser in a little over 2.1 seconds, while it is 1822 hard flux in 3.6 seconds from a Heavy Blaster.

So a lot of analysis here is going to be heavily context dependent.  Although in general against Remnants, spending 6 OP to make the enemy "miss" 3.64 shots every 10 seconds is still a better deal than paying 1.6 OP to make them fire 5 burst PD charges in the case of a Missile Specialization Typhoon launcher and Remnant shields, and "miss" the equivalent of 0.55 shots (400 soft flux for the burst) every 15 seconds.  2625 is still 26% of the base flux capacity of a Brilliant, or 21% of an Apex.  16% or 14.5% in the case of maxed vents.  Those 5 burst PD shots against Reapers are 4% and 3.3% of the base capacity, or 2.5% and 2.2% of maxed vents.

Against a fully functional combat line, a single Reaper, 4 Harpoons, or 3 Hammers are not making it across that no-man's land.  Even a Dragonfire might not make it depending on its target's relative location to the line.  Now, point blank range in a human player's hand on a highly mobile ship is a different situation, but I'd argue that is not the use case being considered here, given it sounds like an AI firing into shields. I'd be interested what the best missile investment would in fact be for a single salvo from a medium or large missile launcher is into shields?  Even a single Squall launcher won't drive the hard flux up on an Alpha Core Radiant if there's nothing else hitting it.

And it is true, DEMs are much more effective in a missile saturated fleet than not.  But this is true basically for all missiles, since you need to overwhelm the opposing line's point defense to land non-DEM missiles.  A single Harpoon pod or Typhoon Launcher is not likely to overwhelm a typical Remnant cruiser's PD, while a set of 4 or 8 is going to land some hits.  A full fleet of Gryphons and Conquests spamming Squalls and Harpoons will overwhelm and destroy an Ordo in short order, as their PD simply can't keep up.  Every missile past saturation is a free hit and a fully missile loaded fleet can easily mix missiles to cover each other's weakness.  Squalls and Harpoons or Squalls and Hurricanes can be an effective mixed damage type long range volley of missiles from a missile specialized fleet.

Also, in regards to the extra shots of the Reaper launcher compared to the Dragonfire, how often do you actually run out in actual play?  If you're not running out of Reapers, what are the extra shots actually doing for you?  Is a Typhoon launcher 6 shots for 10 OP, or is it more like 2 or 3 for 10 OP in AI hands?  Especially once Expanded Missile Racks and Missile Specialization come into play.

[Killer of Fate]

fair, but I feel like reaper's higher ammo count does apply significantly, cause NPCs don't wait for an opening to launch a projectile. Dragons are just spammed and Reapers seem to be fired when an enemy is getting to very high flux levels or randomly???

So, higher ammo count helps a ship in being stupid. It keeps firing missiles for no reason. And if it comes to Dragon, losing one missile is a tragedy. Losing on Reaper is bleh. This gets mitigated with the expanded missile racks and missile specialisation. But the difference is significant. Mathematically so, though possibly irrelevant in short equal encounters that are just about blowing up a small fleet.

I mean... 7 Cyclone shots, 10 Hurricane shots, 5 Dragon shots.
21, 30, 15. And note Cyclone shoots 2 missiles, which deal 2k shield damage (well, 1k I guess). Hard flux too.
And Dragon's projectile is only 600 health for the fact that it needs to hang around and arm. Whereas Reaper's just accelerates and hits with 500 health. So, the enemy has a significantly shorter window to hit it, than the Dragon. And there are two of them.

Spoiler

[close]

If it comes to missile saturation, yeah. I guess there is not much difference between Hurricane/Squall saturation and Dragon saturation. But the thing is that Dragon does not have support roles compared to Squall and Hurricane (tbh, I'm surprised I bothered to learn that name, I would usually call them circling missiles)...

Well, to me, on paper. Hurricane can be applied on top of a weakened ships to deal high explosive damage. Squall can be shot before, to weaken a ship's shields to expose it to damage. Useful for Mjollnir for eg. I think... Dragon is just Dragon. It may prevent an enemy from firing, allowing you to overflux it. But like... What? That is so much more situational than just overfluxing them. Having hard flux damage against shields. That is so gigantic. Or having high explosive damage that is like, so much more reliable than DEM's 2k hit strength. Reaper has 8k hit strength. Cyclone's hit strength is mere 1k, but you get 7 missiles. Meaning you deal 7k damage. Compared to 4k. And twice as much ammo. And sort of more reliable too, although more vulnerable to area of effect pd.

Cyclone is five projectiles, Squall is a lot of projectiles. Dragon might walk into an asteroid and explode. And it moves so slowly, and it needs to get so close. But eh, I guess that doesn't matter. It's a minor aspect.

In spite of what I just said about Squall/Hurricane being similar, I feel like Dragon is better when spammed at least short-termly. Cause you do not lose DPS against each durability type. Spamming Dragons is similar to spamming Mjollnirs, I would guess. You have weaker less effective DPS that is energy, meaning that you get double DPS because all launchers apply to an encounter. If you are a Pegasus. In real life. I mean, in game. Then you have 4 missile launchers, you shoot 2 Squalls and 2 Hurricanes. 50% of combat effectiveness from missile launchers goes to shields, and the other to armour and hull. With DEMs, you always apply 100%, meaning you get 100% of that stupid burst damage. Meaning you get all 4 slots operating at a time against any opponent. Which is a versatility argument, which is the aspect that causes low ammo capacity to reduce Dragon's potency.

[Goumindong]

). So, as I stated, you need something that hits HARD, QUICKLY, and ideally something that can equally devastate the shields and armor.

Jackhammers

[
The Odyssey has the weakest shield out of all the High Tech capitals, it also has the second smallest arc.
Dragonfires are also useless against shields that dual Plasmas can't deal with quickly enough, soft flux isn't going to cut it against a capital ship or cruisers with good flux stats. "The only downside" do you realise that you can have at maximum 12 shots in total with that loadout? Are you just fighting small pirate fleets where sustainability doesn't matter?

1) The Odysseys shield is very good. It’s only worse than the Astral if the Astral is fit exceptionally weirdly. It’s arc barely matter. It’s an Omni shield.

2) sustainability doesn’t matter much because there are only going to be 2-3 targets in a fight worth blowing missiles on. So you might as well go HAM on them. Like. Do you need more than double plasma to deal with a cruiser?

[Draba]

And it is true, DEMs are much more effective in a missile saturated fleet than not.  But this is true basically for all missiles, since you need to overwhelm the opposing line's point defense to land non-DEM missiles.  A single Harpoon pod or Typhoon Launcher is not likely to overwhelm a typical Remnant cruiser's PD, while a set of 4 or 8 is going to land some hits.  A full fleet of Gryphons and Conquests spamming Squalls and Harpoons will overwhelm and destroy an Ordo in short order, as their PD simply can't keep up.  Every missile past saturation is a free hit and a fully missile loaded fleet can easily mix missiles to cover each other's weakness.  Squalls and Harpoons or Squalls and Hurricanes can be an effective mixed damage type long range volley of missiles from a missile specialized fleet.

Also, in regards to the extra shots of the Reaper launcher compared to the Dragonfire, how often do you actually run out in actual play?  If you're not running out of Reapers, what are the extra shots actually doing for you?  Is a Typhoon launcher 6 shots for 10 OP, or is it more like 2 or 3 for 10 OP in AI hands?  Especially once Expanded Missile Racks and Missile Specialization come into play.

Been using Dragonfires quite a lot this version, they are just too slow to be practical in any fleet I've used.
Too much time passes between missile launch and payload triggering, so even if it's not shot down it often wastes the charge on something that's already dead (sometimes literally).
Paired with the low base ammo it doesn't feel good compared to the alternatives (Mirv, or Cyclone in direct fire mounts).

Typhoon often doesn't use up all ammo (0.97 seems to be much more conservative with it), but 2 shots on M Dragonfire for 12 is really low.
Typhoon can easily skip racks and/or skill while still getting work done, that's a big advantage.

Ammo could be fine IMO, taking so damn long to do damage after launch is the main thing holding dragonfire back.

1) The Odysseys shield is very good. It’s only worse than the Astral if the Astral is fit exceptionally weirdly.

Why?
Astral shields has 33% better effective health and same regen out of the box.
Every point in caps/vents helps it much more, OE helps it much more, doesn't need lots of venting to do damage.
Astral should ~always have better shields, being weaker than Odyssey is the exceptionally weird case.

[Killer of Fate]

I mean comparing Odyssey's and Astral shields is pretty weird. Same with Paragon to Odyssey. Odyssey has the ability to retreat and rapidly engage. Astral and Paragon are just static bricks that can only move when they are on 0-flux boost. Of course they're going to have better shields. But Odyssey might have better shield usage long-termly, unless it'll get burst down, because it can retreat.

[Goumindong]

Astral shields has 33% better effective health and same regen out of the box.

Because of OP and flux usage. It is legitimately difficult to fit an Astral with both enough wings to be effective as a carrier and have a good shield. This is compounded by the fact that you cannot use your good shield and also deal damage as an astral at the same time so you might as well not try. If something is close enough to damage your shield your fighters are likely dead. And so having a particularly strong shield isn’t actually that valuable (which makes it harder to fit)

It’s exceedingly easy to fit an Odyssey.

Like. Let’s say we have max caps and vents on an Odyssey (let’s ignore the skill for now). This leaves 170 OP for for 2 Plasma Cannon and then the rest of what you want. So 100 OP for hull mods and mining lasers and jackhammers. For this you get 25,000 cap, and 1500 dissipation. 1250 post shield net.

Let’s fit a similar astral. You also have 170 OP left but you have to fit 6 wings at probably a minimum of 12 OP each(flash) and you’ve still got the two large missiles to fit. So now you have 98 OP for all of your weapons and hull mods. And you need expanded crews 100% or you will quickly be useless even with the skill. For this we end up with 22,000 cap and 1100 dissipation. But post shield dissipation this is 680 dissipation…so the Odyssey is dissipating double the real effective dissipation.

And then comes the real crux of the issue. Recall device. Recall device costs 6,000 flux. So if you have max caps and use it once your effective shield is down to 16,000. This is still technically more shield than the Odyssey has unless it’s hardened. But it’s still much easier to harden the Odyssey.

When I fit an Astral and do attempt to give it good shields they’re almost never hardened. It usually has zero vents. I never have space for stabilized shields. I am running beams (graviton and Ion) as it’s primary offense and hoping things don’t get close enough to really pressure it. And even with this low flux beam set it’s running higher negative in terms of net flux with a much lower effective cap. The Odyssey is burning like 400 above dissipation while dumping double plasma and 6+ mining lasers. While the Astral is running 400 to 600 above dissipation (or more) as well but each point above dissipation is cutting into shield at a rate of .6… up to 1000 damage/second the astral is doing to itself. So the Astral does have better shields until it actually has to use them for more than 10 seconds or it needs its bombers back.

The fact that the Astral has a front shield also matters a lot. Because, like the Odyssey it really wants to put its three side medium mounts towards an enemy. Which means that unless you omni shield convert you cannot out the shield down in order to refresh cap and we are already desperately low on OP to afford the Omni shield conversion. Thus you often cannot shield flicker. Whereas this is very easy for the Odyssey, increasing its effective shield far above the listed number.

For all these things the Odyssey has a far larger effective shield. Even not accounting for its ability to back away with its ability and refresh capacity

[Draba]

...

I disagree with basically everything beyond the Odyssey being able to back away and this is a DEM topic anyway, dropping this beyond 1 note.

1250 post shield net.
...
But post shield dissipation this is 680 dissipation…so the Odyssey is dissipating double the real effective dissipation.

Even if you ignore that on Astral stabilised is even good enough for an smod, and Odyssey needs a minimum of 1650 flux/s to do damage:
680/0.6 = ~1133 effective dissipation compared to Odyssey.

[Goumindong]

Even if you ignore that on Astral stabilised is even good enough for an smod, and Odyssey needs a minimum of 1650 flux/s to do damage:
680/0.6 = ~1133 effective dissipation compared to Odyssey.

And the Astral needs its dissipation to do damage too. If the enemy is close enough to pressure you your fighters are dead. It’s about 18 seconds per fighter, down to about 9 seconds with expanded fighter crew and the skill with an officer.

Hard flux dissipation is based on your actual flux dissipation not post usage.

You simply cannot shield tank effectively as an Astral. You can get a decent temporary defense. But like. It’s gonna be really hard to use this as a tank. 

Like… I’ve tried to build this mystical astral. And I have made good Astrals. But I have never successfully made one that ever felt like it would survive well on the front line and wasn’t like… useless at being a carrier.

[Phenir]

Even if you ignore that on Astral stabilised is even good enough for an smod, and Odyssey needs a minimum of 1650 flux/s to do damage:
680/0.6 = ~1133 effective dissipation compared to Odyssey.

And the Astral needs its dissipation to do damage too. If the enemy is close enough to pressure you your fighters are dead. It’s about 18 seconds per fighter, down to about 9 seconds with expanded fighter crew and the skill with an officer.

Expanded deck crew has no direct effect on replacement speed.