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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); In-development patch notes for Starsector 0.98a (2/8/25)

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Author Topic: Ziggurat performance testing  (Read 2003 times)

SCC

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Ziggurat performance testing
« on: January 11, 2025, 12:52:54 PM »

The offhand comment in one of the threads that Ziggurat isn't being used by two best performing fleets had me curious. How good can Ziggurat get? Well, not that great in my experience. The fastest time to kill 2 ordos has been 390 seconds, which is over twice as long as missile spam and SO hyperion spam fleets have taken. I had two issues, the best Ziggurat loadout and the best supporting fleet, and I think I have solved the former, but not necessarily the latter. I forgot to show skills in the video, so I attached an image to this post.

I initially tried a fleet with Furies, because I felt bad for them, but eventually I got rid of them, because Medusas are simply better than them. With the extra DP I have also gotten an Onslaught (because it kills stuff and isn't afraid of communist clouds) and an Anubis... Which seemingly turned out irrelevant, so that's one thing I can get rid of? In the heat of the battle I also forgot to try to get the last Medusa onto the field, resulting in some lost potential, but I'm not sure if I even could deploy it at any point.

That said, I'm not sure if Ziggurat is actually better than Radiant, even with all the skill sacrifices Radiant takes. I think Radiant is actually a better flagship than Ziggurat, it's just that Ziggurat is easier to get.

Update: Ziggurat was not, in fact, optimal, because omega missiles are so much better than regular weapons it isn't even funny. On top of that, I replaced all the other ships with Retributions and you know what? Good riddance, Retribution slaps. This way I managed to get closer to 180 seconds with a time of... 251 seconds. Merely a minute longer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdRDsScqB6o


happycrow

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Re: Ziggurat performance testing
« Reply #1 on: January 11, 2025, 01:12:14 PM »

Ziggy doesn't need a skill choice AND is a solid stealth ship, so that makes sense to me personally.
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SCC

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Re: Ziggurat performance testing
« Reply #2 on: January 11, 2025, 01:16:30 PM »

solid stealth ship
Everyone always knows it's you when you are using Ziggurat. I suppose it helps with the fleet's sensor profile.

BigBrainEnergy

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Re: Ziggurat performance testing
« Reply #3 on: January 11, 2025, 02:21:45 PM »

In this case I might call into question the validity of the conclusion based on the test conditions. Yes, radiant or missile spam will kill double ordos faster, but I believe you can use ziggurat to solo 3+ ordos for massive amounts of XP. It may also be possible to do this with a radiant, I don't know. On the other hand, missile spam would run out of ammo.

Double ordos kill speed is useful to know, but another test we might want to consider is 5 ordos speed. A lot more tedious to test, obviously, but that kind of endurance battle changes your priorities in ship building quite a lot. This might just be my opinion, but I usually find it more impressive when you show off the largest DP of remnant killed in one battle as opposed to killing the same amount faster.

Even if the radiant does turn out to be better than ziggurat overall, I think this is kind of fine. Ziggy skills are fairly easy to fit into any build. Radiant requires 2 specific top tier skills (auto-ships and sysex) plus neural link.
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PixiCode

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Re: Ziggurat performance testing
« Reply #4 on: January 11, 2025, 02:41:57 PM »

In this case I might call into question the validity of the conclusion based on the test conditions. Yes, radiant or missile spam will kill double ordos faster, but I believe you can use ziggurat to solo 3+ ordos for massive amounts of XP. It may also be possible to do this with a radiant, I don't know. On the other hand, missile spam would run out of ammo.

There's a maximum of +500% bonus exp, which limits how much exactly you can solo unless you want to 'waste' bonus EXP potential. So as the enemy fleets you're fighting at once gets larger, eventually there's no real EXP penalty to having a larger player fleet.

With some play I did before, I see cases where the player could solo 3+ Ordos with omega weapons with Odyssey, Radiant and Doom, too. Harbinger and Afflictor might be able to if they didn't have lower PPT, but rip. Odyssey, I have some personal experience doing that one, rift torpedoes on it allow it to solo whole ordos by doing smart mixtures of aggressive posturing and constant running away. My first attempt was just as a joke to make a reverse-broadside (right side instead of left) Odyssey with torpedoes in the right and rift torpedoes on the left. I killed 444 DP of remnant until I decided to retreat due to low HP. With some optimization, I'm optimistic it could do better, but won't know for sure until it's seriously done. For Doom, I've seen other players tell some really tall tales about how to solo with it using AMSRMs, Typhoons, S-mod Reinforced Flux Conduit for more rapid active venting and all your other various skill buffs. Radiant, at worst, you can just corner camp, skim forward to kill, retreat back to corner. Cheesy, but map boundaries sure are powerful.

I wonder how much Zig can solo without omega weapons? I tried it a few times and wasn't particularly impressed, but I also didn't try very hard either.
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Wyvern

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Re: Ziggurat performance testing
« Reply #5 on: January 11, 2025, 02:55:26 PM »

I wonder how much Zig can solo without omega weapons? I tried it a few times and wasn't particularly impressed, but I also didn't try very hard either.
It's not measured in Ordos, but I did solo the entire Persean Crisis blockade with the Zig once; camped the jump point out of their staging system and engaged the whole pile all at once. ...That might have included a pair of rift lances, though? My favored zig variant uses two of those (and one rift cascade emitter if I've got it, which I'm pretty sure I didn't at the time.) It was also a two-engagement fight; ran out of CR before they ran out of ships, had to retreat and re-engage to finish off the rest of them.
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Megas

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Re: Ziggurat performance testing
« Reply #6 on: January 11, 2025, 03:43:46 PM »

solid stealth ship
Everyone always knows it's you when you are using Ziggurat. I suppose it helps with the fleet's sensor profile.
It is a good stealth ship if it does not fight.  It is useful for bloating DP in your fleet to scare away the civilians that orbit markets I want to raid, while having low enough profile to avoid patrols.  (Yes, I do raid markets with all of their defenses, just because I want to avoid fighting.)  Kind of like classic squishy thief that is only good for picking locks and disarming traps.

For fighting, yes, auto-id ruins that aspect of stealth.
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Pizzarugi

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Re: Ziggurat performance testing
« Reply #7 on: January 11, 2025, 07:26:45 PM »

Double ordos kill speed is useful to know, but another test we might want to consider is 5 ordos speed. A lot more tedious to test, obviously, but that kind of endurance battle changes your priorities in ship building quite a lot. This might just be my opinion, but I usually find it more impressive when you show off the largest DP of remnant killed in one battle as opposed to killing the same amount faster.

I agree with this. I like to try and set up fleets that have enough endurance to take on 5 ordo fleets or, failing that, a fleet that has enough firepower to take them out quickly enough before PPT runs out or CR degrades too far.

I don't expect Iggy Ziggy to be able to handle that, especially not under these specific conditions OP established. I feel like they would have a better chance using a Radiant. The problem with phase ships is that they don't have any real defenses. Yes I know they can phase out, but armor and shields don't lock you out of using your weapons like phase does. And let's not forget that the Ziggurat is a capitol ship which are notoriously sluggish, so the movement speed boost will only take it so far before the flux becomes a problem, making it difficult to escape from dangerous fights. The Radiant doesn't have these drawbacks, plus it has Phase Skimmer so it can easily slip away from the thick of combat to vent before diving back in which only gets easier with SysEx. I don't think the Mote Attractor is a powerful enough ability to compensate for this by comparison.

To quote Mithrix from Risk of Rain 2: "Speed is war."
« Last Edit: January 11, 2025, 07:32:19 PM by Pizzarugi »
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Princess of Evil

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Re: Ziggurat performance testing
« Reply #8 on: January 11, 2025, 11:34:23 PM »

If you use a ziggy to lower your raid profile, you might as well raid with a fleet of phantoms and revenants. They're literally designed for it.
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SCC

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Re: Ziggurat performance testing
« Reply #9 on: January 11, 2025, 11:38:40 PM »

In this case I might call into question the validity of the conclusion based on the test conditions.
Do you think Ziggurat can kill these two ordos faster, because it can can solo ordos or something? My experience with soloing tells me it takes longer than fleet combat - which is pretty bad, when I'm looking for a way to beat 2 ordos as quick as possible.

With some play I did before, I see cases where the player could solo 3+ Ordos with omega weapons with Odyssey, Radiant and Doom, too.
[...]
For Doom, I've seen other players tell some really tall tales about how to solo with it using AMSRMs, Typhoons, S-mod Reinforced Flux Conduit for more rapid active venting and all your other various skill buffs.
Last time I did it (in 0.96), I could defeat 2 ordos with AMSRMs, Resonators and Ion Pulsers. With cyber aug, I could probably do better now.

Harbinger and Afflictor might be able to if they didn't have lower PPT, but rip.
Just double/triple dip, you have PCT points to spare.

Radiant, at worst, you can just corner camp, skim forward to kill, retreat back to corner. Cheesy, but map boundaries sure are powerful.
It appears I lost this footage, but I know for certain I did actually fight... Uh, an indeterminate number of ordos with a Radiant and a Paragon, camping in the corner. It might have actually been 5, as I remember retreating and re-deploying, but without proof I can't be sure.

I wonder how much Zig can solo without omega weapons? I tried it a few times and wasn't particularly impressed, but I also didn't try very hard either.
Probably quite a few if you are corner camping. I think the loadout would have to be 2 APL or 2 tachlances, 4 HVDs, 6 AMBs or something like that, to get some long-range bite to finish ships off or to force them to drop their shields. Rift cascade emitters can get away without long range hard flux partially because they ARE the long range hard flux, and partially because they can just bypass shields entirely sometimes.

I don't expect Iggy Ziggy to be able to handle that, especially not under these specific conditions OP established. I feel like they would have a better chance using a Radiant.
It is fairly difficult to fight 5 ordos while fighting only 2 ordos, yes...

Edit: I slightly regret not naming this thread "Furies suck so badly, holy crap"

Megas

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Re: Ziggurat performance testing
« Reply #10 on: January 12, 2025, 06:07:26 AM »

If you use a ziggy to lower your raid profile, you might as well raid with a fleet of phantoms and revenants. They're literally designed for it.
I tried that (with 30 Phantoms).  Civilians, smugglers, and the like will engage and block the raid.  The fleet needs enough actual combat ships to prevent civilians and other small patrols from blocking the raid.  Such small fleets near the market are common.  This is why bringing Ziggurat in a raider fleet is good if you avoid fighting the battlestation and/or patrols.  It is a lot of combat power in one slot to help scare away small defenders.
« Last Edit: January 12, 2025, 06:15:09 AM by Megas »
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nathan67003

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Re: Ziggurat performance testing
« Reply #11 on: January 12, 2025, 06:37:52 AM »

I personally use the Zigg as a surgical strike ship. While the Paragon and whatever other ships in my fleet are busy dealing damage and tanking, I go out with the Zigg and surgically dismantle enemy flagships, ships that's trying to go for a flanking maneuver, etc. A force multiplier rather than a force all on its own.
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SCC

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Re: Ziggurat performance testing
« Reply #12 on: January 15, 2025, 11:01:47 AM »

I just did a joke loadout of all omega missiles and it rocked for some reason. I really need a better fleet. I need to try these Retributions someone suggested. It sounds funny, but so did omega missiles...

BigBrainEnergy

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Re: Ziggurat performance testing
« Reply #13 on: January 15, 2025, 11:21:27 AM »

That is impressive. I guess nobody has truly optimized the ziggurat's loadout, since it's always taken for granted that it's going to be powerful regardless. If it has this kind of performance solo, it might be able to outdo missile spam with an actual fleet backing it up.
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