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[TheFreind]

Spoiler

No matter what build you give a dominator it benefits from being told to reposition itself somewhere better when it starts chasing some silly destroyer or frigate.

There’s a few ways to make a dominator and a few ways to specialize it against certain enemies. Here’s some general build advice for the dominator though;

Always use Integrated Targeting Unit if you are not using safety overrides.

Always use omni shield + accelerated shield if you’re using safety overrides and giving it to the ai to pilot. Or shield shunt I guess, but I’m not a fan of shield shunt dominator.

Avoid using mjolnirs if it isn’t made SO and avoid hephag. Not only is mjolnir a bit too costly for the dominator, but it also strongly prefers being in a spinal hardpoint or turret. This is because its armor stripping power isn’t the best, so it benefits from hitting the same spot on armor over that your other weapons may be hitting, concentrating damage and getting that mjolnir to hull sooner rather than later. Hephag is not as expensive but it’s got a similar ‘wants to be concentrated’ thing going on as the mjolnir. In contrast the hellbore, mark9 Autocannon and devastator all love being in hardpoints, though the devastator is notably shorter range.

Strongly consider Ballistic Rangefinder small kinetics for its loadout. Light auto cannons, railguns, light needlers. This isn’t the single best way to build a dominator, but it’s in the running as the ship that loves using BRF the most. You might even want to downsize the mediums into small kinetics too, to save on flux compared to the usually more flux inefficient mediums. Again, not a ‘must do,’ just something to consider as a tool for your builds.

Strongly consider using high impact missiles in the mediums. Target analysis elite skill’d pilums with eccm do lots of emp damage once they hit. Harpoons with ECCM are great finishers and 3 linked together are likely to hit. Any of the unguided missiles are good impact when they hit. Sabots can swing a battle immediately if the enemy gets too close.

Consider Omni shield + hardened shield builds. Yes, dominator is an armor/hull tank, but armor/hull can synergize with shields pretty well. With Omni shield it is encouraged to flicker shield more often, resulting in more armor hits from minor weapons while blocking scary ones but also more effective shields as a result.

Don’t forget to put at least 4 mining lasers or 2 Vulcans somewhere at the rear to stop the odd salamander.

[close]

Excellent advice on build loadouts! I'll give these a shot. I think putting the big Hephs on might've been a mistake since people prefer it over the Hellbores. But I am a sucker for seeing millions of ballistics. Maybe I bring two Dominators, one with mediums and the other with smalls and compare performance.
Smart point about the omni shield flickering. I'll look to give it a try.

As for "high impact missiles," do you mean missiles that do a lot when they connect to their targets? Like Reapers compared to Atropos? I stay away from Pilums but I think I got inspired by the Onslaught man with his.

Thanks, Pixi.

Spoiler

Put a leash on it. By that I mean give a defend or rally point to guard. And give it a friend (EP destroyer, a nimble frigate, or even another dominator) so it doesn't have to worry so much about getting flanked and end up changing targets.

[close]

Fair enough. I need to be more comfortable with relying on the Dominators to act as an anchor in the middle. But those smaller escorts sound like a good solution to prevent it from turning on less important targets. Let the small guys knife fight it out. As for the loadouts for the escort - should I specialize them to some purpose? I.E. have strong point defense, or be fire support, or be a small glass cannon? Maybe I make clusters of small squadrons and let the Dominator lead its small force. Thank you Phenir.

[PixiCode]

Hey if you love hephag it’s not a bad choice, I just think it doesn’t perform well on the Dominator due to the awkward turn rate and hardpoints. You might like devastator builds, but be warned they’re much shorter range than using any other 900 range large since they have those  limited distance fuses.

[Phenir]

Spoiler

Put a leash on it. By that I mean give a defend or rally point to guard. And give it a friend (EP destroyer, a nimble frigate, or even another dominator) so it doesn't have to worry so much about getting flanked and end up changing targets.

[close]

Fair enough. I need to be more comfortable with relying on the Dominators to act as an anchor in the middle. But those smaller escorts sound like a good solution to prevent it from turning on less important targets. Let the small guys knife fight it out. As for the loadouts for the escort - should I specialize them to some purpose? I.E. have strong point defense, or be fire support, or be a small glass cannon? Maybe I make clusters of small squadrons and let the Dominator lead its small force. Thank you Phenir.

I think dominator can cover pd itself pretty well, it just needs someone to watch its back against enemy frigates. To that end and keeping with low tech, it's pretty good buddies with a fast frigate like lasher (out ranges other frigates and bursty with aaf and it can go cap points early on) or a manticore (big gun means big range so it can assist the dominator easily if there is nothing better for it to do). If you think it really needs a PD buddy, like you are fighting a fighter heavy enemy, Omen (yeah it's high tech but it's also PD: the ship) with a systems expertise officer is really good and the omen can still ward off frigates. Just be aware it is not going to jump in front of the dominator to block missiles so the dominator still needs pd but its system can slap fighters when other pd won't even shoot because the fighter is on top of the dominator.

[PixiCode]

if you officer the omen with wolfpack, target analysis elite and system expertise, it becomes one of the best little escorts to attach to any ship.

Hard Escort (telling a specific ship to escort a specific ship) command sort of sucks since it can cause the escort to get in the way of shooting or, more commonly, just put itself into death situations, but it works when it works.

[Princess of Evil]

Which, by my calculations, is ~350 units (before ITU) before it starts losing DPS to random flakkening.

Why are you saying before ITU? The ship this is being designed around is a known quantity, the dominator, so we know what the ITU bonus would be.

900 x 1.65 (40%+10%+15%) = 1,485 and 1,685 if pd elite is used too. If devastator deals at least 55% of its damage at 981 range with these bonuses, it’s a much more flux efficient slightly lower range version of hellbore, for less hitstrength, that is way harder to shield flicker and also acts as fighter and missile clear. That range would be a little less than the Railgun range without BRF. But like you mentioned ships won’t always be at max range, so devastator will be doing even more damage on average. Especially versus fearless enemies that love getting close.

Due to how flak rounds work, Devastator does nearly exactly the DPS and hit strength of hephag at melee range, and starts losing it from 25% of its max range. Due to burst fire, it's very flickable, although not quite as much as hellbore; however, hit strength really matters here. Hephag and hellbore have the exact same DPS against cruiser armor. And hellbore's comes in massive chunks that means hellbore effectively gains dps from not having to do one of its long reload cycles (and also means your shield dps can start chewing through punched armor).
Also i love how you forgot that Hellbore and Railgun also get bonuses from ITU.

[Phenir]

Which, by my calculations, is ~350 units (before ITU) before it starts losing DPS to random flakkening.

Why are you saying before ITU? The ship this is being designed around is a known quantity, the dominator, so we know what the ITU bonus would be.

900 x 1.65 (40%+10%+15%) = 1,485 and 1,685 if pd elite is used too. If devastator deals at least 55% of its damage at 981 range with these bonuses, it’s a much more flux efficient slightly lower range version of hellbore, for less hitstrength, that is way harder to shield flicker and also acts as fighter and missile clear. That range would be a little less than the Railgun range without BRF. But like you mentioned ships won’t always be at max range, so devastator will be doing even more damage on average. Especially versus fearless enemies that love getting close.

Due to how flak rounds work, Devastator does nearly exactly the DPS and hit strength of hephag at melee range, and starts losing it from 25% of its max range. Due to burst fire, it's very flickable, although not quite as much as hellbore; however, hit strength really matters here. Hephag and hellbore have the exact same DPS against cruiser armor. And hellbore's comes in massive chunks that means hellbore effectively gains dps from not having to do one of its long reload cycles (and also means your shield dps can start chewing through punched armor).
Also i love how you forgot that Hellbore and Railgun also get bonuses from ITU.

It's not flickable because its burst length is so long meaning your kinetics are going to be doing shield dps instead of being armor tanked, especially if the volleys get staggered.
Even if hellbore has the same dps against armor (I assume you meant to compare it to devastator, not hag) the devastator is way more flux efficient and has way more dps against hull, and doubles up as PD meaning your forward slots can be dedicated to anti ship instead of pd gaining you even more dps.
Why are we even talking about range when the point was to get close enough (or enemies get close enough) for it to not matter.

[Princess of Evil]

Here's a little game design secret: despite looking so different, all four large ballistics you'd use against armor do nearly the same DPS to cruiser and capital grade armor.

The range talk started because someone brought up railguns as "close range" and i pointed out that their range doesn't differ enough from larger medium range ballistics to really matter.

[Phenir]

Here's a little game design secret: despite looking so different, all four large ballistics you'd use against armor do nearly the same DPS to cruiser and capital grade armor.

The range talk started because someone brought up railguns as "close range" and i pointed out that their range doesn't differ enough from larger medium range ballistics to really matter.

Here's a secret, I didn't say anything about their dps being different against armor.

[PixiCode]

Which, by my calculations, is ~350 units (before ITU) before it starts losing DPS to random flakkening.

Why are you saying before ITU? The ship this is being designed around is a known quantity, the dominator, so we know what the ITU bonus would be.

900 x 1.65 (40%+10%+15%) = 1,485 and 1,685 if pd elite is used too. If devastator deals at least 55% of its damage at 981 range with these bonuses, it’s a much more flux efficient slightly lower range version of hellbore, for less hitstrength, that is way harder to shield flicker and also acts as fighter and missile clear. That range would be a little less than the Railgun range without BRF. But like you mentioned ships won’t always be at max range, so devastator will be doing even more damage on average. Especially versus fearless enemies that love getting close.

Due to how flak rounds work, Devastator does nearly exactly the DPS and hit strength of hephag at melee range, and starts losing it from 25% of its max range. Due to burst fire, it's very flickable, although not quite as much as hellbore; however, hit strength really matters here. Hephag and hellbore have the exact same DPS against cruiser armor. And hellbore's comes in massive chunks that means hellbore effectively gains dps from not having to do one of its long reload cycles (and also means your shield dps can start chewing through punched armor).
Also i love how you forgot that Hellbore and Railgun also get bonuses from ITU.

I didn’t ‘forget’ hellbore and railgun get ITU benefit. What, do you think hellbore is a midrange weapon? 900 base range is not a midrange weapon. 700 is. And I’m not using BRF with this devastator concept for that reason.

I don’t appreciate you using passive aggressive sarcasm with me :c

EDIT: Briefly on the topic of the large ballistics against purely armor+hull;

The Devastator and Hephag both don't struggle being shield flickered nearly as much as the hellbore does. I also feel like the hardpoint devastator's spread helps the dominator hit frigates and destroyers better than hellbores would. I don't know about Hephag, but comparing a Dominator with 2 hellbores against the Eagle with no shield vs. the 2x Devastator with no shield, the Devastators kill the eagle in around the same time when used at non-BRF railgun range. I used the same range - a Gunnery Implants, Integrated Targeting Unit, Ballistic Mastery Elite, PD Elite Devastator range setup, with the Hellbore having all the same skills. I used 2 railguns to rangefind each, putting the dominator at the rax range where the railguns hit the eagle's armor, though I never fired the railguns. Then, I shot at it with the larges until it died.

I also was using 100% CR, Cyber Aug, Target Analysis so the damage of both weapons is increased a fair deal, but both killed in around 12 seconds.

I tried this same setup with the sim slaught, the hellbores were much better. This might be partly due to how the Devastator proxy fuses sometimes don't actually damage the enemy's hull despite detonating due to proximity to the enemy ship, but it's probably mostly due to having big armor.

[Princess of Evil]

I didn%u2019t %u2018forget%u2019 hellbore and railgun get ITU benefit. What, do you think hellbore is a midrange weapon? 900 base range is not a midrange weapon. 700 is. And I%u2019m not using BRF with this devastator concept for that reason.

~SO is short range, 700-900 is midrange, 1000+ is long range. The brackets are very obvious from weapon stats (especially DPS, which gets basically halved every range bracket).
I said about you ignoring ITU because you seem to compare fully buffed Devastator with baseline other weapons, and Devastator loses a lot of firepower with range even with every PD weapon buff. Don't get me wrong, Deva is a great weapon, it just isn't midrange, despite what its stats suggest.

EDIT: Briefly on the topic of the large ballistics against purely armor+hull;

The Devastator and Hephag both don't struggle being shield flickered nearly as much as the hellbore does. I also feel like the hardpoint devastator's spread helps the dominator hit frigates and destroyers better than hellbores would. I don't know about Hephag, but comparing a Dominator with 2 hellbores against the Eagle with no shield vs. the 2x Devastator with no shield, the Devastators kill the eagle in around the same time when used at non-BRF railgun range. I used the same range - a Gunnery Implants, Integrated Targeting Unit, Ballistic Mastery Elite, PD Elite Devastator range setup, with the Hellbore having all the same skills. I used 2 railguns to rangefind each, putting the dominator at the rax range where the railguns hit the eagle's armor, though I never fired the railguns. Then, I shot at it with the larges until it died.

I also was using 100% CR, Cyber Aug, Target Analysis so the damage of both weapons is increased a fair deal, but both killed in around 12 seconds.

I tried this same setup with the sim slaught, the hellbores were much better. This might be partly due to how the Devastator proxy fuses sometimes don't actually damage the enemy's hull despite detonating due to proximity to the enemy ship, but it's probably mostly due to having big armor.

It's mostly to do with Eagle having very mid armor. Which honestly makes sense, considering it's midline. Non-BRF railgun range is only 55% of flak reaching, which is why hellbore somehow got close enough despite being ~67% (close range) hull DPS.
(Also, Eagle would be basically beaten into submission after the first shot, it would have no armor left. You can finish it from there with the railguns.)

[PixiCode]

I’m comparing fully range buffed devastator by constantly calling it ‘as if it was a 700 base range weapon,’ I’ve never once said it’s the same range as Hellbore or BRF railgun. Devastator can be made a midrange weapon is what I’m saying. If it has damage comparable with hellbore at non-BRF ranges, it’s a short-midrange weapon in that one very specific situation. It’s a build I use specifically against remnant, like I’ve already said several times, because remnant are generally not very long range and have non-shield durability comparable to the Eagle for their cruisers. If the remnant ever get closer than 980 su (700 x 1.40 range) they start taking a ton of damage and if they stay at 980 range it’s basically a more flux efficient hephag. If they’re beyond 980 range it’s worse than hephag, but these are remnant we’re talking about. Unless it’s a radiant or a tachyon cruiser they won’t be staying that far away. This is on top of the bonus that the devastators count as frontal pd so it reduces the need to put pd on the front so you can focus on railguns, needlers, maulers, HVD/arbalest/hac or whatever.

By the way, I would not call 900 base range weapons midrange. It’s the longest range weapons in the game besides the very few 1k range weapons, gauss and missiles. But, that’s just an opinion I guess. I feel like that’s 600-800 base range weapons. 

Eagle is middle of the pack for all cruisers armor-hull durability wise The only cruiser actually durable due to its armor is dominator - eradicator and mora only have 1250 armor which wouldn’t skew the results much, damper field would but any HE gun will be slowed against that.

[Princess of Evil]

Hephag deals nearly the same damage as Devastator, because of how flak affects its damage. Except, you know, without flak, but also without flak. And like i said, 55% of total DPS at max range of other weapons hurts.
Honestly, comparing it to Hellbore is weird. You wouldn't use Hellbore against Remnant, they don't have anything worth putting on a dedicated armor hole puncher.

600 is medium range for energy weapons, it's pretty easy to get confused.

[PixiCode]

There's no confusion there to speak of. Ballistic and energy weapons exist in the same game on the same battlemap with mostly the same range bonuses, though ballistics get a potential 10% extra from Ballistic Mastery. So, the definitions of what range a weapon is on the battlemap doesn't change based on what mount the weapon goes into.

Case and point, A plasma cannon is effectively the same range as a storm needler. That, objectively, should not mean that storm needler is one range bracket and the plasma cannon is a different range bracket.  Cutoff points for when to call something short, mid or long can be subjective, though. You could argue that high tech ships are a different speed bracket than most ballistic ships that can equip larges and that can skew the result, but the apogee exists. The Sunder exists. Champion exists. The retribution exists. The prom2, surprisingly high top speed besides it’s awful maneuvering, exists.

I would use hellbore against remnant, if the build made sense. I don't use hellbore very often against remnant since the new storm needler and buffed Hephags exist, but there's two builds where I would: a BRF Hellbore Dom build and a BRF Legion build. For the Legion. 2 Hellbores, 2 heavy maulers in the rearmost composites, 1 HAC at the nose, 2 flaks, BRF small kinetics (such as, 2 light needlers 2 LACs, or 4 light needlers, or railguns or whatever). This frees up the need to use ECCM or expanded missile racks, the hellbore's flux cheapness lets you afford all these ballistics and 2 hellbores are harder to flicker than one hellbore.

Even for faster ships like fulgents and brilliants, hellbore might potentially do a bit more damage than a hephag due to getting in a cheeky final hit before they retreat away from the slow dominator or legion. You can’t always rely on the ai to use burn drive to chase, let alone it to make sense to burn drive to chsse. That's probably a really minor thing, but it's something to consider.

Radiant has 1,500 armor and 20,000 hull - that alone means hellbore has value, but hellbore is also good at stopping 1,100 12,000 hull Apex. Although the hephag is better at hitting smaller targets and isn't shield flickered as much, the Hellbore 750 HE damage per hit means its dps usually catches up to hephag thanks to armor damage calculation and minimum armor. It also costs 16 OP, that's really nice OP savings for a carrier so that it can better afford a bit more flight deck stuff.

I've been comparing hellbore and hephag interchangeably throughout this discussion, but I think I compared Hellbore more often because it is one of the most popular slots for the Dominator's larges. If the dominator could just stop wobbling so much and if it had better hardpoint weapon arcs, i'd like hephags on it more. Not that I think they're a bad choice on the dominator, I just think it skews a bit more value towards the hellbores. I think it also skews it a bit towards value for the devastator - you're more likely to be at close range where the dominators will win out over hephags, and while at 960 su range these range-buffed devastators are still worse DPS wise than the hephag they are still very versatile for a variety of reasons. Hitting frigates with dom's hardpoint hephags is kinda hard. They won't really clear fighters or many missiles. Devastators will.