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[WhisperDSP]

Background:

I have been thinking about the new Anubis cruiser coming in 0.98, particularly the triple-large energy weapon slots. Alex's comments regarding the flux/hullmod/design choices have been interesting to mull over.

It struck me that the Odyssey also has triple-large slots: two energy, one synergy. For a high-tech broadsider capital that likes to dip in, fire, then retreat - that could be handy to deal with fighter- and missile-spam. (*cough* Persean League was incoming *cough*)

Character skills are everything in the full Leadership tree + non-weapons-related Technology tree (not including the following: gunnery implants, energy weapon mastery, neural link, or automated ships). In fact my character sat out the combat with the Persean League in the Phaeton fuel tanker.

The Frankenstein Odyssey:



The Officer:



This is overall obviously bad: my loadout skills are poor and officer-skill-picking is mediocre. Yet darned if it didn't seem to do a halfway-decent job. I was expecting to get stomped, yet by adding two of these to my fleet I ended up being the stomper. (Note: That is probably because I had 4 battlecruisers fielded instead of my normal 2 Conquests.)

This could definitely be improved. Some simple examples:

* A few more tactical lasers for extra ranged attacks, the single one at the tip is flat-out dumbness on my part

* S-mod the IPDAI for the all-small non-missile weapons acting as PD weapons (ie the extra tac lasers) and think about other worthwhile hullmods

* Shift some of the vents into other things since there's a ton of excess flux dissipation

I'm curious: has anyone else done anything along the lines of a PD/Strike craft?

Not just the Odyssey, I'm curious about other options that have been tried as well. Also the thinking behind the choices made.

Edit:

The Conquests are a fairly bog-standard uniside build. LP Brawlers round out the fleet, typically 8-9 get fielded and 6 of them have L6 officers also.

[Sandor057]

Shouldn't here be an image of your Odyssey?
Seems to be missing.

[Princess of Evil]

There is one for me.

You forgot anything that can deal with shields.

[WhisperDSP]

There is one for me.

You forgot anything that can deal with shields.

Apologies, I hadn't realized that I implied I was only using 4x battlecruisers. I use the Conquests and LP Brawlers for shields.

I will update the original post to remedy that oversight.

Someday I must graduate from the LP Brawlers also, while they work there is many other options.

[Sandor057]

Shouldn't here be an image of your Odyssey?
Seems to be missing.

Huh, my phone was not displaying the image. Weird. Anyway, for some reason I was expecting a triple Paladin build. (Think I'll have to make one for the fun of it.)

Back to this design, shouldn't we double down on the support/pd role of it with removing the fighter hullmods, replacing them with DTA and add either double Talons, Sparks or Wasps for maximum added PD?

[Not a Pirate]

Recovery Shuttles Captain?

If you're dealing with incoming to colony threats, then the loss of crew should be your last concern.  Make sure you fight within a few seconds flight time of a colony to repair and rearm and whip a few more orphans into the cockpits of your talons and use those OPs somewhere else.

I would only consider Recovery Shuttles when I know I'll be fighting protracted battles against multiple fleets in hostile territory where I can't land, or (if I'm not using mods) invade.

[Killer of Fate]

needs AMB and Sabots at the front

[WhisperDSP]

Huh, my phone was not displaying the image. Weird. Anyway, for some reason I was expecting a triple Paladin build. (Think I'll have to make one for the fun of it.)

Back to this design, shouldn't we double down on the support/pd role of it with removing the fighter hullmods, replacing them with DTA and add either double Talons, Sparks or Wasps for maximum added PD?

I didn't consider a triple Paladin build because it seemed important to make the synergy slot on the right of the Odyssey more useful from all sides - so, big missile. I settled on the Squall for the long-range pressure. A Locust might be good also, to wipe out fighter/frigate spam.

So thinking about it...

The Officer has Elite Point Defense skill: +200 base (?) range to all PD weapons. That takes the Paladin range from 750 to 950, barely short of the Tach Lance range. Dump that Tach Lance and throw in another Paladin.

S-mod IPDAI: All small energy weapons are suddenly PD weapons, +200 base range to Tac Lasers (up to 1200 now).

The ITU gives +60% range, Gunnery Implants skill gives +15% range: everything gets +75% range. That's 1662.5 for the Paladins and 2100 for Tac Lasers. Also Burst PD gets (500+200) * 1.75 = 1225 range.

(I haven't added Advanced Optics, it seems unnecessary for an extra 200 base range.)

I'm uncertain re the use of DTA. Anything small that gets so close that the fighter-PD engages should be fairly-much erased already?

Recovery Shuttles Captain?

If you're dealing with incoming to colony threats, then the loss of crew should be your last concern.  Make sure you fight within a few seconds flight time of a colony to repair and rearm and whip a few more orphans into the cockpits of your talons and use those OPs somewhere else.

I would only consider Recovery Shuttles when I know I'll be fighting protracted battles against multiple fleets in hostile territory where I can't land, or (if I'm not using mods) invade.

Yup, Recovery Shuttles. You are 100% correct if these were only for home defense. However once the incoming threat was dealt with, I wiped out 5-6 more of their blockade fleet on the way back to Kazeron. Since I plan on using these with extended bounty/Ordo hunting (+ whatever is in the Abyss) I felt that it was important to make sure the least number of crew were lost.

needs AMB and Sabots at the front

Something like double-AMB + Sabots on the nose, woot! Dip in, erase, dip out! Hahah that might be a fun one to try!

Range calculations as is (with S-mod IPDAI): (400 + 200) * 1.75 = 1050 range. If Advanced Optics were added: (400 + 200 + 200) * 1.75 = 1400 range. Either of those should be vicious, plus 30 shots per AMB.

Yah I'm seriously considering that now.

[Killer of Fate]

AMB doesn't work with IPDAI unfortunately

[WhisperDSP]

AMB doesn't work with IPDAI unfortunately

So the s-mod bonus for IPDAI would not switch them to PD status?

From the wiki:

S-mod bonus: All small non-missile weapons are classified as "point-defense", automatically target missiles, and are affected by point-defense stat modifiers.

[F4RST4R]

IPDAI doesn't affect 'strike' weapons or somesuch.

[WhisperDSP]

IPDAI doesn't affect 'strike' weapons or somesuch.

Even the s-mod bonus, okay. Slight pity, it would have been nice to have the ability to erase a target from beyond base Tac Laser / Tachyon range.

Looked at another way, it is an advantage: the AI won't attempt to use limited AMB shots to take out fighters/frigates, it would save them for bigger and juicier targets. Given that the Paladins and Tac Lasers should erase the smaller stuff before they get close.

[WhisperDSP]

blast blast blast! I just reread, and you said Sabots! Rest of post is invalid.

Spoiler

Sad news for the AMB/Reaper combo.

Four tests against the final hegemony inspection fleet, 2 each for AMB/Reaper/double-Harpoon POD and 2 each for tac-lasers/triple-Harpoon POD. Since the sample size is small it is more "feelz" rather than realistic/hard numbers.

I will refer to the AMB/Reaper/double-Harpoon POD combo as "AMB". I will refer to the Tac-laser/triple-Harpoon POD combo as Tac-Laser.

The TL/DR "general feelz" version:

The AMBs didn't fire often enough and the officers seemed hesitant to fire the Reapers. They were quite happy to spam the double-Harpoon POD missiles. The AMB combo didn't feel as viscerally satisfying as the Tac-Lasers.

Example AMB: Odyssey would flux up a target, then dip in and *maybe* fire the AMB, *maybe* fire the Reaper, and release a salvo of 8 Harpoons. I saw the Reaper miss a few times. It didn't "feel" particularly effective.

Example Tac-Laser: Odyssey would flux up a target, then dip in and fire a salvo of 12 harpoons. Most every time the target would overflux then blow up - at least overflux. It was rare for the Harpoons to miss. It "felt" satisfying, like, you had ripped the guts out of the target.

Let's get to the few numbers that I have:

Loadout	Harpoon Damage	Reaper Damage	AMB Damage	Notes
AMB 1, Target Fleet 1	43941	15678	3895	I think this was a double-fleet
AMB 1, Target Fleet 2	8719	6847	0	Smaller target fleet
AMB 1, Target Fleet 3	17561	8183	1239	Only one Odyssey fired its AMB
AMB 1, Target Fleet 4	31611	15180	623	Only one Odyssey fired its AMB
Tac-Laser 1, Target Fleet 1	28596	n/a	n/a	Smallish fleet
Tac-Laser 1, Target Fleet 2	46614	n/a	n/a
Tac-Laser 1, Target Fleet 3	83331	n/a	n/a	Double-fleet
Tac-Laser 1, Target Fleet 4	30871	n/a	n/a
Tac-Laser 1, Target Fleet 5	37192	n/a	n/a
AMB 2, Target Fleet 1	21324	7022	2568	Lost an Odyssey
AMB 2, Target Fleet 2	57468	12504	7890	Bigger fleet, lost an Odyssey
AMB 2, Target Fleet 3	18833	11907	570	Smaller fleet, only one Odyssey fired its AMB
AMB 2, Target Fleet 4	47059	11560	4491	Bigger fleet, nearly lost an Odyssey
AMB 2, Target Fleet 5	51910	15129	3215
Tac-Laser 2, Target Fleet 1	72095	n/a	n/a	Double-fleet (+ small?), lost a Conquest (Odyssey "bonked" it into the face of a couple Onslaughts and it flamed out helpless) This fleet immediately re-engaged after the survivors fled the battlefield, so I had to fight again minus a Conquest and with all my fleet damaged
Tac-Laser 2, Target Fleet 2	36621	n/a	n/a
Tac-Laser 2, Target Fleet 3	36560	n/a	n/a	Odyssey "bonked" another Odyssey (flamed out and helpless) into the target fleet, luckily the fleet was mostly erased by then

Looking at it, the overall damage numbers are (very) roughly equal for AMB vs Tac-Laser fleets. It simply seemed that the AMBs were less-satisfying in their effect.

I am somewhat "huh?" regarding the Odysseys in the AMB 2 results. Two Odysseys lost and one very badly injured...gut feeling is not great with that set. Still, the sample-size is too small for hard facts vs feelz, it could simply have been:

1/ a one-off fluke

2/ really bad leadership/orders

[close]

[WhisperDSP]

Right, I did some Ordo-hunting for a while. Eventually the crew was whittled down from 4k to 2.2k and had to go replenish.

AMB: The Odyssey wouldn't fire them, probably because they were high on flux when they zoomed in to strike at an enemy. AMB shot would have overfluxed them.

Sabot SRM Pod: These were fired, however the Harpoons were more often fired.

Currently the Odysseys look like this:



I am tossing up between taking out Stabilized Shields since that's 15OP for maybe 75% usage and honestly sod-all flux saving. The OP could be put into better things: perhaps Hardened Shields for 20% damage reduction, caps/vents if nothing else.

The double-Paladins surprise me, they sometimes do the most damage (though sometimes I lose an Odyssey from bad generalship, or it being bonked by the other Odyssey):

[Phenir]

Stabilized shields has no value as long as you can still put in 13 vents on odyssey. 250 upkeep halved means 125 dissipation for 15 op. 15 more vents would give 150 more dissipation for 15 op. Hardened shields isn't worth it until about 22000 capacity unless you value that arc resistance.