Anyone have any good loadouts for the Qianzi? Been trying to make it work but having issues working around the triphammers flux cost. I can't fire it together with other weapons for very long, it can't do that much damage by itself, and I can't effectively strike and retreat due to the combination of short range and the Qianzi being very sluggish.
Usually supplementing with missile fire would be a great solution for bursty flux-heavy weapons but with the missile hardpoints removed that isn't an option. (What poor engineer approved that change? 
)
The Qianzi does a ton of damage with the triphammer, a little less than a Harpoon for each shot. You want as much of that as possible to hit armour, so you want kinetics to be fluxing out their ship first so you only take shots at them when they are at high flux and you might be able to overload them, unless you outgun them significantly enough that you don't need to worry about the flux war. Fortunately, the Qianzi can mount three forward-facing ballistics. The trick to fitting ships which have very high weapons flux costs and have slightly subpar speed is to put Safety Overrides on them:
Some quick testing in the mission combat sim (this setup has no ship OP bonuses, so you have a lot of wiggle room to add stuff in campaign) says that this variant can kill three enforcers while under AI control, within its peak performance timer, so it's even fairly good as an early to midgame AI ship. With 10 caps, under player control it can solo an Eagle or other medium cruisers that don't have better kinetic damage. With auxiliary thrusters it eats frigates, and the AI misses far fewer shots from the triphammer with auxiliary thrusters fitted against frigate/destroyer sized targets. The key to this is getting them to high flux with the three needlers, using the triphammer as little as possible (trying to overload them at high flux, or maybe giving them some encouragement to raise their shields just as your needlers are about to fire at low flux). Once you have armour stripped off, you don't need to fire the triphammer if there's no need because needlers are ideal against bare-hull ships relying on their shields.
You can replace a needler with a Burchel beam repeater if you need more armour damage and PD (the Burchel is a really good weapon for getting both for the price of one). A light assault gun also works if you're regularly fighting armoured ships that don't mind shield-tanking you, and a railgun if you prefer to have some sustained kinetics (I personally think stacking burst kinetic damage is stronger, but ship fitting is largely a matter of preference).
As you get more OP, add more vents, caps, ITU, RFC, perhaps hardened/extended shields. Fit more damage weapons in the energy mediums once you feel very comfortable with the survivability of the setup. Bursty energy mediums let you kill/overload high flux targets. A heavy ion blaster or ion beam or other long/medium range ion weapons will force enemy ships to keep their shields up and not armour-tank your needlers. Heavy ion blasters in particular are effective against ships with concentrated weapon layouts and can make your ship extremely survivable
and kill things faster because when you initially win the flux war, you can keep their weapons/engines disabled and not take fire while you fire your triphammer and needlers flat-out while they helplessly sit there and have to eat the punishment. Ion beams can be used as laser pointers to force enemies to shield up from far away. Graviton beams are much maligned but offer dependable kinetic pressure if you just need a tiny bit more.
EDIT: Sy ninja'd me. Funnily enough I started out from Sy's tournament loadout above. Reasoning for my changes:
Sy's loadout is a less extreme version of mine, with maximised ordnance giving more flexibility but much less pronounced strengths and weaknesses. Sy's ship is a more balanced mainline fleet ship; this ship is intended to kill many ships in a series of 1v1 duels, and when outnumbered to force enemy ships to back off with a quick needler volley to give it a bit more time to work on a chosen opponent. I heavily prefer burst needlers over sustained railguns since I think burst is better for flux trades, but worth noting that his fit applies flux and damage slightly better against ships that don't raise shields against you due to ions and not potentially wasting bursts on armour when their ship drops shields, but is less efficient in straight up shields-up flux trading.
Poll
294 (54.7%)
Author
Topic: [0.9.1a-RC8] Tiandong Heavy Industries v1.2.1a - Updated 11/1/19 (Read 501390 times)