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[Bungee_man]

You can unlock stations in the codex by picking "consider military options" at a colony and just mouse over the station on the right, press F2, and it's unlocked. No need to fight any of them, you can just cancel the menu.

Come to think of it, it'd be kind of cool to need to unlock station designs. We start out only being able to make Buffalo IIs and mining blasters, yet somehow we can also throw together a high tech star fortress by following some notes on a napkin and a blurry photograph? Could stand to add them to the blueprint table, plus a chance of getting one after blowing up a pirate/pather base of the same design.

Also, did anyone manage to unlock Churning Locus in the codex? If so, how?

[Ragnarok101]

Update:

OH LORD THE PALADIN CHANGES.

This thing made me fear the Persean League blockade, because they spam escort Champions like nobody's business. Doesn't matter how many carriers you bring, anything approaching the firing arc of a single Paladin is dead. It's the hardest of hard counters.

I feel like I'm playing a different game when people talk about how threatening the Paladin is now. I use a carrier-heavy fleet, and PD Brilliants get absolutely vaporized when I encounter them. It's the best energy point defense weapon, and it's genuinely useful now, but it by no means provides immunity to fighters.

I just watched a Champion ignore a double-squall barrage coupled with all six fighter wings of an Astral going on bombing runs at once so either the Escort build runs Expanded Magazines S-modded in order to spam this out or your definition of 'carrier heavy' is different from mine.

[Bungee_man]

Update:

OH LORD THE PALADIN CHANGES.

This thing made me fear the Persean League blockade, because they spam escort Champions like nobody's business. Doesn't matter how many carriers you bring, anything approaching the firing arc of a single Paladin is dead. It's the hardest of hard counters.

I feel like I'm playing a different game when people talk about how threatening the Paladin is now. I use a carrier-heavy fleet, and PD Brilliants get absolutely vaporized when I encounter them. It's the best energy point defense weapon, and it's genuinely useful now, but it by no means provides immunity to fighters.

I just watched a Champion ignore a double-squall barrage coupled with all six fighter wings of an Astral going on bombing runs at once so either the Escort build runs Expanded Magazines S-modded in order to spam this out or your definition of 'carrier heavy' is different from mine.

Ah, I think I see what the issue might be. Did it wipe out the squadron, or did it just shoot down their missiles? If you're using something like the Trident, whose missiles are slow and easy to shoot down, you've got to have a way around PD. I go for Flash bombers, who have very durable, very numerous missiles.

[Thaago]

Gonna say, I just put my own Legion XIV up against it, dual Hurricane, Broadsword, 3 Piranhas, up against the escort champion and while the PD shot down some (~35%) of the incoming ordnance/fighters which is impressive for a single weapon, it was unable to stop the strikes from hitting or kill the wings entirely. I don't have full skills either.

[Killer of Fate]

Update:

OH LORD THE PALADIN CHANGES.

This thing made me fear the Persean League blockade, because they spam escort Champions like nobody's business. Doesn't matter how many carriers you bring, anything approaching the firing arc of a single Paladin is dead. It's the hardest of hard counters.

I feel like I'm playing a different game when people talk about how threatening the Paladin is now. I use a carrier-heavy fleet, and PD Brilliants get absolutely vaporized when I encounter them. It's the best energy point defense weapon, and it's genuinely useful now, but it by no means provides immunity to fighters.

I just watched a Champion ignore a double-squall barrage coupled with all six fighter wings of an Astral going on bombing runs at once so either the Escort build runs Expanded Magazines S-modded in order to spam this out or your definition of 'carrier heavy' is different from mine.

that's just Squall nerf in action

[Brainwright]

Eh, homogeneous weapon spam is pretty weak in general.  If anything, I'd like to see carriers be able to wait until ships are high in flux until launching fighters.

I've had a lot more luck with Threat and Dweller fleets.  On one hand, I was using somewhat small fleets, but those fleets could bring down any Persean fleet short of double Radiant ordos.  On the other, the Engage command was really making things hard.  In the early game, I could consistently use Engage as if it were Defend to push back ships threatening vulnerable parts of my fleet.  Could it kill ships?  Of course not.  Against the Threat and Dweller, it was quite obvious that most ships would just sit barely out of range threatening ships, but not actually closing to fire their weapons, much less using their entire arsenal.  This was a death sentence as these special fleets largely ignore PPT.

What really helped was assigning four to five ships to the engage command.  Then they would start to surround the target and push in aggressively.  This wasn't such a problem earlier, as it will easily grab four to five frigates in a small fleet.  But when my front line was a pair of Eagles?  It would just send the Eagles and maybe one of my Anubis carriers.  And they wouldn't actually close to kill the target, just drive it away.  Against the Dweller, this would devolve into a straight battle line for ten minutes until they wore down each of my ships in turn.  Not fun.

I actually haven't seen this "corpse wall," effect TK mentions.  The wreckage seems to explosively despawn a few seconds after the swarms leave, which is maybe thirty seconds after death.  What is a problem is how spawning a ship fresh with zero flux completely screws over base AI.  You finally get your ships to engage a Fabricator, and a freshly spawned Line Unit or Assault Unit just vaporizes the poor bastard because they didn't register it as a threat until it was fully spawned.  I would strongly recommend spawning new Threat ships at full flux or even removing reclamation swarms if a ship is killed before it's finished construction.

Really liking the Dweller weapons.  They're all kinda synergistic, like how you can get better than flak PD on a frigate by installing Lens and Thunderhead (haven't tried it yet, but it follows what I've observed) for the same price.  The best platform I've seen so far is the Hyperion, where you can really install just about any combination you want.  Current setup is just a kinetic blaster, rift lightning, and thunderhead.  Viciously effective frigate hunter, and generally competent otherwise.  That rift lightning strips armor well and Thunderhead is just gravy.

Speaking of Rift Lightning, it's fast becoming my favorite.  As PD, it can generally shoot down one Reaper, but otherwise it completely invalidates frigates while being pretty good at killing fighters (better than flak).  One thing I would complain about is how the Dweller ship seems to be able to shoot Rift Lightning over my ships.  It kills my frigates and destroyers fairly effectively, no matter what they do to escape.

I still stand by my previous assessment of the new faction fleets.  The best way to defeat a Dweller is to tank its weapon fire, as it quickly fluxes out like any High Tech ship.

The Doom has been enormously effective.  For the Dwellers, it can bait Tendrils to move their shields, and the mines are a direct counter to Convulsive Lunge.  A Doom can singlehandedly defeat a Shrouded Maw with just mines.  For the Threat, the Doom is one of the best ways to kill reclamation swarms, and can pick them off just as they spawn.  It has trouble against Line Units, but everything else does, too.

[Megas]

Just starting to farm Ordos, I got a few more alpha cores from the weaker Ordos, enough to test alpha Remnants in 1-vs-1 (or two or three ships vs. 240 DP of Remnants) in the SIM.

The updated simulator has been useful for updating my builds.  Stuff that worked against human and Shroud fleets get torn apart by alpha Remnants.  Right now, I am trying out ships buffed by fleet commander (because I use Neural Link) until I find one that can beat its weight (cruiser against cruiser, capital against capital).

So far, I found an Executor loadout that uses Swarm Launcher, Heavy Mass Drivers, and human PD weapons (Heavy Burst Lasers and Paladin PD).  I probably would not have bothered with Paladin, but I got tired of Radiant shoving Reapers down my Executor's throat.  At first, I tried HILs and IRALs, but Radiant shoves Reapers down my throat and Executor overloads.  I use PD weapons instead and the Reapers get eaten and while they do not strip armor as fast, they still wear down and kill Radiant dead eventually, or my ship dies but it is a closer fight.

Swarm Launcher messes with Radiant AI.  Instead of skimming away from my flagship to kite and vent, it often skims away from the swarm and toward and my ship and attempt a quick kill.  This works more to my advantage than trying to burst down Radiant fast with conventional weapons only before it skims away and vents away its hard flux.

The idea is to find two beefy ships that will work with Neural Link, add MK1, then pad the rest of my fleet with Monitors or other effective small ships to cap points and/or distract things away from my big three ships.  If I do not pilot Radiant, I can use AI cores for extra Remnant ships.  The idea is either to fire all my officers for more bonus XP or use one or two at a time and the rest are effectively benched until I need them for other ships later.  I do not want to fire eight officers repeatedly every time I change my fleet.  I want to use as few ships as possible to avoid using officers as much as possible because level 5 with no elite skills is probably not strong enough.  (I refuse to waste SP and get no refund after the officer is obsolete and needs to be fired).

I like s-mod Neural Link when try to pilot two capitals.  Instant transfer to vent at critical moments is nice.  Also, Neural Reset to Burn Drive continuously with double Onslaught and not let cowardly ships escape.

[Bungee_man]

The updated simulator has been useful for updating my builds.  Stuff that worked against human and Shroud fleets get torn apart by alpha Remnants.  Right now, I am trying out ships buffed by fleet commander (because I use Neural Link) until I find one that can beat its weight (cruiser against cruiser, capital against capital).

I think the deal with Remnant is that you can't really beat them cruiser-for-cruiser reliably (since they have objectively stronger hulls and better officers), but you can put together fleet combinations that perform better as a unit than alone. I've been using a flagship Radiant/Afflictor that leverages entropy amplifier to trivialize one on one fights, plus a swarm of officered Anubises that harass enemies with HILs, bombers, and swarms. The latter won't do much one on one against an aggressive cruiser, but when the enemy is tied up fighting my flagship, they can attack it from three directions at once (per ship!) - their shields are as good as useless in that scenario, and they go down quickly. Double Ordo becomes pretty straightforward at that point.

[Megas]

Some background

I have a Combat 5/Tech 5/Industry 5 build, and I have no intention of changing it anytime soon because I want to see how bad it really is.

Combat 5 is:  Helmsmanship, Combat Endurance, Impact Mitigation, Target Analysis, and Systems Expertise
Technology 5 is:  Navigation, Gunnery Implants, Phase Coil Tuning, Neural Link, Automated Ships
Industry 5 is:  Field Repairs, Ordnance Expertise, Polarized Armor, Industrial Planning, Hull Restoration

Helmsmanship so that capitals are more responsive.
Combat Endurance for +15% CR, and more PPT for smaller ships.
Impact Mitigation for more maneuverability to slow capitals (I would prefer Damage Control for faster repairs, but I want fast turning ships)
Target Analysis for more damage no matter which ship I use.
Systems Expertise to make Radiant overpowered and some other ships much more mobile.

Navigation for burn 20 with fewer tugs
Gunnery Implants for more range
Phase Coil Tuning for more PPT and speed to phase ships (I always have at least one in my fleet)
Neural Link for double flagship and/or to pilot Automated Ships.
Automated Ships because I "gotta-catch-'em-all", which is only possible with Automated Ships (can't catch them without the skill)

Field Repairs to fix new ships from the enemy (best of the worst for Industry 1)
Ordnance Expertise for more flux (why was this nerfed for officers' sake, player needed the extra flux)
Polarized Armor to vent faster.
Industrial Planning to meet commodity demand for my colonies (again, best of the worst for Industry 3)
Hull Restoration to avoid or purge d-mods out of my fleet.  Ironically, I use a lot of d-mod ships just so Hull Restoration can remove them.

[close]

My officers are all level 1 except for a single level 2 because I am in no mood to lock-in their skill choices for an ever-changing fleet, then fire-and-replace them if they do not work.  It was so much easier replacing only ships and weapons in older releases years ago (despite them being rarer and easier to lose).  All I have for officers that count is my double from Neural Link, alpha core for MK1, and AI cores for any remaining points left for Automated Ships.  Support Doctrine is not an option because I have no Leadership.  (I want Industry instead of Leadership, not willing to give up Combat, and I need Tech for Automated Ships to catch-'em-all.)

I used Afflictor/Radiant combo at first when I fought human fleets, but I stopped using it when I started fighting Shroud and Threat fleets (they have anti-phase tech).  I need more bulk and firepower since my fleet has very few strong officers (just my fleet commander and AI cores).  If I had Afflictor in my fleet now, which would rob bonuses from Phase Coil Turning Doom or Ziggurat would get.  Any Afflictors in my fleet would be piloted by no one or a mere level 1.

Just fought my first full-sized double Ordos for this release, though it was a weaker duo because it was cruiser spam without any capitals (lots of Brilliants and Apexs, but no Nova or Radiant).  Managed to win that one while losing only two Monitors, which popped right back up like zombies without any d-mods - this time.  Recovered every last ship the Remnants dropped since I cannot buy or build them, and I went over the 30 ship limit (and way over my Automated Ships limit), so I had to go back home to store my loot, which were mostly a bunch of Remnant hulls I plan to use later, plus an alpha core and one or two Remnant fighters.

My fleet at the time was Ziggurat (human weapons only), Radiant, MK1, and several Monitors to point cap and tank.  Had Onslaught and Executor in the fleet as backup in case one of my capitals died, but I did not need them in the end.  Every large ship in the fleet that was not automated ship had Neural Interface so that if a ship died, the replacement would immediately get a copy of my commander as an officer.

My active fleet is basically three capitals (two Neural Links, plus alpha MK1) plus any other ships that could be useful even if they did not have an officer or a pile of s-mods.

P.S.  No s-mods on any of the ships that fought.  The only s-mod I have right now is Expanded Magazines on a Radiant, and one was in storage.  The Radiant I used was a backup that had one d-mod and no s-mods because it does not deserve s-mods until all the d-mods it has are gone from it.  My backup Onslaught and Executor were loaded with multiple d-mods too.  (They are only in the fleet as reserve disposable ships since I was this close to Scuttling them for being too expensive to restore and too long a wait for Hull Restoration to fix.  Well, the Onslaught I can build another, but Executor has to be Restored to be made pristine no matter if I build it or recover one from an enemy.)

P.P.S.  I found a level 5 officer with a decent generalist skill set (Helms/Impact M./Damage Con./Targ.Ana./Gunnery), though missing Combat Endurance is a bummer (no 100% CR).  As my ninth officer that sits around eating income, he is only around because I was too lazy to fire him, but now I have have half a mind to fire one of my level 1s instead just because I do not need to spend SP for the level 5's elite skill.  I have no intention to spend SP without refund for elite skills on disposable officers.  None of my normal officers will ever get elite skills because they are too inflexible and disposable for the investment.

[Megas]

Really liking the Dweller weapons.  They're all kinda synergistic, like how you can get better than flak PD on a frigate by installing Lens and Thunderhead (haven't tried it yet, but it follows what I've observed) for the same price.  The best platform I've seen so far is the Hyperion, where you can really install just about any combination you want.  Current setup is just a kinetic blaster, rift lightning, and thunderhead.  Viciously effective frigate hunter, and generally competent otherwise.  That rift lightning strips armor well and Thunderhead is just gravy.

Speaking of Rift Lightning, it's fast becoming my favorite.  As PD, it can generally shoot down one Reaper, but otherwise it completely invalidates frigates while being pretty good at killing fighters (better than flak).  One thing I would complain about is how the Dweller ship seems to be able to shoot Rift Lightning over my ships.  It kills my frigates and destroyers fairly effectively, no matter what they do to escape.

I like most Shroud weapons.  The only one I really dislike is Psuedoparticle Jets because I cannot see the enemy's shield after the weapon smokes out and obscures the whole area around impact, which means I cannot see if the enemy's shield is on or off and hope it does not totally block a follow-up burst from a Voidblaster to wreck the armor underneath.  Voidblaster really needs Mining Blaster's or IRAL's don't-fire-on-shields hint.  Psuedoparticle should probably be renamed to Smokescreen.

Inimical Emanation is a decent PD/assault hybrid for some ships.  Sometimes, burst PD may be more attractive, but if I feel burst PD will not be good enough for the ship, and my ship would be using such PD as an assault weapon at times, then this may be more useful.  Anti-phase and super EMP can be handy occasionally.

Hungering Rift is overpowered at times much like an Omega weapon.  Not in DPS, but as a long-range homing weapon for ships that normally have range problems.  The only thing keeping it in check is the ten-shot limit, which means you put it on one or two ships.  This is probably my most used Shroud weapon.  Since it counts as a missile for bonuses, ships built around it may not need ITU, but ECCM and maybe Unstable Injector and/or Shrouded Mantle instead.

Rift Lightning is good enough on the ships that can boost its range more than others.  I like that it can pass over ships, but it is only practical with enough range.

Abyssal Glare seems like a compromise weapon between typical beam and bolt weapons (range and amount of hard flux).  While not spectacular, it is at least decent, and it has been useful enough on some ships.  I like it as a hitscan weapon with more range than autopulse that hits for hard flux (although it is not much, so some other weapon should be the one adding hard flux).

I dislike the Shroud hullmods mainly because they obscure my ships and also because I have to watch what I do before mindlessly docking at a Ludd world.  (If you dock with transponder on, rep goes all the way down to hostile and you get kicked off the planet.)  They are also not very powerful.  The only one I care to install is the Mantle, and only if I can s-mod it to activate the vampiric healing effect.

[StuffyEvil]

You can unlock stations in the codex by picking "consider military options" at a colony and just mouse over the station on the right, press F2, and it's unlocked. No need to fight any of them, you can just cancel the menu.

Huh, that makes sense, go figure.

[Talgo]

I've yet to encounter a First Strike beyond the quest which introduces them, I don't know if that was a one-off or what.

My mistake, I have been encountering First Strikes, they just all had Fabricators. Crazy how this First Strike is about as difficult as walking from the living room to the bathroom,


while this First Strike is like advancing that same distance at the Somme.


And then this Second Strike isn't much of a step up from the monofab, by comparison.


If these fleets are going to have different classifications, wouldn't it make sense for First Strikes to have no Fabricator unit, Second Strikes to have one or two Fabricators, and then Third Strikes have at least two Fabricators and a large initial wave? Come to think of it, is the initial wave of assisting ships even a major factor? Some tests I did using the Reveal cheat with the console command mod showed a single Fabricator is capable of constructing at least 120 fleet points worth of Threat units simultaneously, but I guess having the ships deployed at the start lets them meet your own fleet farther down the board.

I actually haven't seen this "corpse wall," effect TK mentions.  The wreckage seems to explosively despawn a few seconds after the swarms leave, which is maybe thirty seconds after death.

Thirty seconds is a significant amount of time, it's about how long it takes the Fabricator to construct an Overseer. Line and Hive units seem to take around thirty-five, and Assault units twenty. Fabricator corpses themselves do not break down into fragments, and as Fabricators are large, mostly-stationary enemies their hulks will obstruct fire for a long time, unlike how Remnants tend to sail off the board after dying mid-maneuver. What makes it worse is that while every other faction will try to fight you where you are, the Threat units you need to kill always stay in the same area. If a dead Apex is lazily drifting between you and your Remnant of choice, you can wait for it to pass, you can maneuver around it towards the enemy, or let them come to you. A Fabricator is content to sit behind its dead brother and keep churning out more ships.
Every time I've pushed a fight all the way back to the Fabricators there's a massive mountain of garbage to obstruct outgoing fire, between the spawning-in Threat ships, the dead and decomposing Threat ships, any of my own casualties that might happen at this point. Then once one Fabricator goes down, any others present immediately crank out 20dp of more garbage and now there's a station-sized lump in the way.

[Killer of Fate]

This is weird, First Strike on my save file were just 3 ships
I assume it was changed in-between the RCs as to not lure the player into a false sense of security which is something I approve of very much tbh...

Though I will have to test this further?
Before I can form a proper opinion on the subject...

[SCC]

Come to think of it, is the initial wave of assisting ships even a major factor?

If the initial wave contains many overseers, then yes, it will be much more difficult. Other threat ships can only use their systems if they get hit with overseer's energy lash and their systems are strong.

[djrvywfbjr]

I keep hearing people say the Voidblaster is not good on player ships, and I can only agree. Can the AI stop firing it off into shields?