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If you're gonna take freighters into combat then use Shepherds and Mules (P). Getting into a fight with Hounds is not a great idea. They're cannon fodder. Funny as hell when something gets killed by them, but cannon fodder.
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Aug 5, 2020 01:49
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combat Hounds are a ton of fun in Luddic Path runs but any other time I try to replace all my Hounds with pirate Mules ASAP
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Aug 5, 2020 01:58
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Yeah I wouldn't suggest putting much stock in your hound fleet, it will work on lovely pirates but as I said, the minute you face anything with a few beams or god forbid a HIL you will start losing them en-masse, like a HIL sunder can face off hounds while outranging them and absolutely obliterating any of them that get in front of its gun. I would suggest if you are using them in combat then auxiliary thrusters and extra armour are the best things to put on, because the main gun is coaxial and requires you to aim the ship, so extra steering is good, and extra armour will allow them to take more return fire before popping. You could conceivaby spring for a makeshift shield but at that point you're using half the OP and flux just to make the ship barely survivable.
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Aug 5, 2020 02:01
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There's lots of early game ships like hounds that can work against weak pirate fleets, or when they have massive numerical superiority. They work until they don't work, after which you find yourself without a fleet and all your fuel and supplies floating around in space!
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Aug 5, 2020 02:16
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Double post
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Aug 5, 2020 02:16
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You probably want to look towards trying to transition to more specialized ships, or at least to better combat freighters. Mules are good, as people have noted, I don't personally like combat freighters especially in vanilla because they don't do either role as well as a specialist ship, but they can be more forgiving when you're starting out. I generally try to buy some buffalos as freight capacity, a dedicated tanker or two, drams or phaetons, and then some cheap but good combat ships like hammerheads, sunders etc, or high end frigates like omens or tempests if they show up. That gives you an optimal combat fleet which can expand its logistics by buying more freighters, but if you get caught out of position and have to do a fighting retreat you'll likely lose ships, which is the benefit of combat freighters.
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Aug 5, 2020 02:25
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Strumpie posted:my suggestion of the (p) was for the shielded cargo holds but it seems they all have them now (or always did, it has been a long time and i vaguely remembered (p)s but that might've been for buffaloes). So hull integrity is basically hull hp, right? So reinforced bulkheads would reinforce hull hp from 2000 to 2800. Yeah I'll have to experiment. See first how much use PD gets considering hounds already get flares, and then see if something like a railgun + Mauler combo might work on a regular hound (I could get the (a) hound but those are more rare and twice the price practically). enigma74 posted:There's lots of early game ships like hounds that can work against weak pirate fleets, or when they have massive numerical superiority. They work until they don't work, after which you find yourself without a fleet and all your fuel and supplies floating around in space! That's what I figure, but I'll try it in the meantime. I'm at over 500k credits right now, so I figure I can start honing in a hound fleet while I start stacking up on credits from missions and smuggling, and then move onto something else, and maybe look into starting a colony or something if I get millions and a decent fleet to defend it. Thanks for all the advice all! I appreciate you guys humoring me in my attempts to optimize the humble hound.
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Aug 5, 2020 05:46
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BeAuMaN posted:So hull integrity is basically hull hp, right? So reinforced bulkheads would reinforce hull hp from 2000 to 2800. when putting on hull mods, if you hover the mouse over the ? in the top right it will display the full statistics plus any modifiers. another excellent use for hounds is in early exploration and salvage fleets to domain probe systems. against old tech the hound is perfectly serviceable in combat and their cargo/fuel means you can really load up on salvage before having to turn coreward. do not attempt to attack [REDACTED] systems with hounds, however.
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Aug 5, 2020 05:56
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The Hegemony spent a pretty penny putting all those warning beacons up, and they're there for a reason.
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Aug 5, 2020 06:01
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If you're going to be massing early game trash it 100% should be Shepards.
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Aug 5, 2020 06:10
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THE BAR posted:I was ambivalent with TB's stuff, but I still miss having him around. I'm sorry that he died, but I've never liked the guy, every interaction I had with him back in the day on the Gamespy forums he was always a dick and treated everyone else like an rear end in a top hat. By the time I join SA, it came to no surprise to me to find out that he had essentially rage-quit the community because goons wouldn't put up with his poo poo. Pearson Exotronics The ships in this aren't very balanced, but they're certainly interesting. Very drone heavy.
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Aug 5, 2020 08:31
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Shepherds are a better ship to build up I think, yes, as they carry more cargo and the surveying/salvage mods remain useful even if you never deploy them in combat. Plus drowning the enemy in borer drones is funny. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 08:45 on Aug 5, 2020 |
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Aug 5, 2020 08:43
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If you are using Hounds, Hegemony Auxilliaries - Hound(A) - are great, since they come with 4 extra ordnance points and extra armor and flux stats. You'd still want some shepherds around because they're just too drat useful. But if you really like having a stupidly fast early game combat freighter, go to Luddic Church space, steal their Cerberus ships, restore them, and give them reinforced bulkheads and extra armor. A swarm of them with a medium slot changun and (regular) 3 small slot machine guns each is extremely dangerous. e: A nice thing about Hound fleets is that they just so fun to fly and watch in action, tbh. my dad fucked around with this message at 11:33 on Aug 5, 2020 |
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Aug 5, 2020 11:29
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I really should do a Luddite run. Is there some new interactions with the Luddic Path cells if you have good standing with them?
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Aug 5, 2020 11:43
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Nope. They'll still form cells on your planets while also happily bulkbuying firearms. Giving them access to your hull production does turn their fleets into terrifying monsters though.
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Aug 5, 2020 14:22
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If you give the Pathers planets in Nex will they form cells on their own worlds with high tech stuff on them?
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Aug 5, 2020 15:58
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Rynoto posted:Nope. They'll still form cells on your planets while also happily bulkbuying firearms. Giving them access to your hull production does turn their fleets into terrifying monsters though. 
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Aug 5, 2020 16:04
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Is the top speed bonus cap 20% from coordinated maneuvers (assuming level 3) overall? Or just from nav beacons?
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Aug 6, 2020 00:15
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The cap is 25%, there's a second skill in the green tree that will increase the cap for it and the ECM skill by 5%.
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Aug 6, 2020 01:30
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Taerkar posted:The cap is 25%, there's a second skill in the green tree that will increase the cap for it and the ECM skill by 5%. Okay, thanks. Was just trying to figure out what to aim for (since having a fleet size cap of 30 makes it pretty easy to hit a cap of 25% (from Command & Control 3)).
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Aug 6, 2020 02:15
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that 25% weapon range reduction from Electronic Warfare + Command and Control 3 is incredibly powerful, really makes your fleet punch above its weight and can help you pull off close wins against enemies who on paper should have mopped the floor with you
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Aug 6, 2020 06:08
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Range in general is extremely important in the game for a few reasons. First off, time you shoot the enemy when they can't shoot back, is time they have to build hard flux on their shields before engaging properly, so you can greatly reduce the effective time on target for the enemy ships. Second, the longer your range, the easier it is to interlock your gun coverage and focus your fire across your fleet, if you can bring more ships to bear just because your guns can reach across your own line, that allows you to capitalize on overloads and focus down enemy ships rather than spreading the damage across their entire fleet venting capacity. Third, ships with shields up move slower, or at least most of them don't get the 0% flux speed boost any more, so this compounds the first effect and just generally makes it harder for the enemy to maneuver because the AI will generally flicker its shields if it's in range of the enemy guns. So a 25% reduction in enemy range is extremely powerful yes, especially if you're running a fleet of large ships with long range guns as it will render the enemy unable to effectively fight you a lot of the time. Larger ships have different effects with the targeting hullmods, first off only cruisers and capitals can mount the basic targeting mod, but the integrated targeting unit can be mounted on all ships and flat out supercedes the dedicated targeting core. However the effects of the targeting mods are greatly increased the bigger the ship you mount it on, for a whopping 60% on capitals with ITUs. So that's one of the main benefits of using large ships, you will almost always put an ITU on them and it gives them massive range bonuses. There's also clown poo poo like the paragon which carries a station grade targeting unit and can basically shoot poo poo from across the map. It's probably the most busted ship in the game honestly even with mods, still really hard to beat a quad tachyon paragon for sheer ship deleting capability. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Aug 6, 2020 |
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Aug 6, 2020 06:27
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Ship AI is also extremely reactive to range advantage, sometimes to a fault. Ships that have the defenses and guns to actually win against bigger ships with a range advantage by rushing them down usually won't because the AI tends to be overly hesitant to expose itself to enemy firepower, leading to them just staying too far away to effectively fight and getting chipped to death.
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Aug 6, 2020 06:58
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toasterwarrior posted:Ship AI is also extremely reactive to range advantage, sometimes to a fault. Ships that have the defenses and guns to actually win against bigger ships with a range advantage by rushing them down usually won't because the AI tends to be overly hesitant to expose itself to enemy firepower, leading to them just staying too far away to effectively fight and getting chipped to death. Let me tell you about Hounds with Vulcans installed  To a fault, with Search and Destroy enabled, it is not uncommon for them to run up and just facedump their vulcan at an enemy. A big enemy that's going down with its hull exposed? Some combats ago I watched like 4 of them do exactly this. Then the big enemy exploded and instantly destroyed/disabled 3 of them, while the other held on at barely any hull left. I finally found a large cache of Railguns so I'm going to see if that affects their behavior or not, and the flares should be enough to deal with the missiles. Rail guns seem to work okay on drones. I also ran this in a sim with just one big enemy (an onslaught), and sure enough when they had burned down enough armor, and then the ship overloaded its flux, they all swarmed RIGHT INTO it. Like 10 or 15 of them, just butting up against the enemy's hull while they shoot their vulcans into it... like little piranhas... and then moved back once it was finished being overloaded. But then, yeah, I have a Hammerhead leftover from the tutorial in my fleet... it might just keep its distance and not unload on the enemy, while I yell "WTF ARE YOU DOING?" at the screen. Pretty often. This is probably what Aggressive officers are for? BeAuMaN fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Aug 6, 2020 |
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Aug 6, 2020 09:06
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Just wanted to say 2x HVD and 1x HIL is a wild combo that holds up even in the modverse.
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Aug 6, 2020 09:12
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HILs generally are extremely good weapons, constant 500HE DPS at 1000 range, easily one of the best anti armour weapons out there ignoring the great efficiency, range, and accuracy. They can really crack capital armour too despite being most effective against smaller craft owing to their accuracy. The only reason I don't run HILs on my paragon is because 4 tachyons can also overload nearly anything and you need that overload on a beam ship, plus the tachyon is almost as good if not better than the HIL against large targets because it dumps so much power in the burst and beam DPS has that weird effect with armour penetration.
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Aug 6, 2020 09:33
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BeAuMaN posted:Let me tell you about Hounds with Vulcans installed Hehe, same with Luddic Path Cerberi, but on steroids. You should get some, I really think you'll like them. Just remember to restore them after capture.
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Aug 6, 2020 09:40
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It's not as efficient but it's always fun to outfit a Paragon with nothing but tac lasers, gravitons, and HILs. 
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Aug 6, 2020 09:43
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Is all this Luddic Path stuff from a mod? I don't remember them having any special mechanics.
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Aug 6, 2020 09:43
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THE BAR posted:Is all this Luddic Path stuff from a mod? I don't remember them having any special mechanics. 100% vanilla. Their ships have built-in safety overrides for free, in exchange for a really debilitating D-mod that makes their weapons break down super fast... and it can be removed through ship restoration, while keeping the free safety override.
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Aug 6, 2020 09:53
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my dad posted:Hehe, same with Luddic Path Cerberi, but on steroids. You should get some, I really think you'll like them. Just remember to restore them after capture. Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. Do you get free storage once you establish your own colony? I mean, apart from the upkeep of the colony?
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Aug 6, 2020 10:17
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Yeah you can store whatever you want (ships + equipment), but note there are two storages, one for resources produced by the colony (this is the default window and you can take stuff for a cost, anything you deposit will stay there and can be used by the colony if you tick the box on the building window, useful for depositing resources during shortages), then the conventional storage window you access like you would at any other market.
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Aug 6, 2020 10:21
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jerman999 posted:Just wanted to say 2x HVD and 1x HIL is a wild combo that holds up even in the modverse. The HIL + 2xGraviton Sunder is something that works far better than it usually should, especially if you slap on advanced optics and an ITU.
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Aug 6, 2020 15:05
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Taerkar posted:The HIL + 2xGraviton Sunder is something that works far better than it usually should, especially if you slap on advanced optics and an ITU. To be fair, it's a constant 650 flux against shields with bursts of 975 when you use HEF. At 1400 range (if you do ITU+AO). The setup struggles mightily against fighter swarms and fast-moving frigates but most Sunders do. Even if you don't deal hard flux, that's enough to offset most ships' dissipation and they can't drop shields because the HIL is a monster (and insane with HEF). They're great even in late-game battles because they can fire with near-impunity and bring Cruiser-level firepower with similar range but at a fraction of the deployment cost.
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Aug 6, 2020 19:57
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Kitfox88 posted:It's not as efficient but it's always fun to outfit a Paragon with nothing but tac lasers, gravitons, and HILs. Actually my favourite build for a paragon is pure beams, because if you're gonna go beam you should go full beam if possible, cos they work better the more you have and they also all benefit from optics, which is twice as good on the paragon anyway. And all gravitons in the mediums is great for overloading shields and is extremely flux efficient too. All tacs, gravitons, and tachyons is how I do it, the paragon easily has enough OP for it.
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Aug 6, 2020 21:11
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The HIL is also the ultimate weapon for telling phase ships to gently caress off. All sustained beams are to a point, but a combination of HIL and ion beams will make phase ships play a never-ending game of realspace-is-lava until they flux out and die.
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Aug 6, 2020 21:33
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Do lategame ai fleets still become enormous? Last I played I fought a riduculously huge bounty hunter fleet and won but it took forever. Is that something tweakable in mods?
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Aug 6, 2020 22:19
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there's a maximum AI fleet size so now what happens instead is that lategame fleets will have higher and higher percentages of capitals until you're running into fleets that consist entirely of battleships and logistics vessels
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Aug 6, 2020 22:21
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Dandywalken posted:Do lategame ai fleets still become enormous? Last I played I fought a riduculously huge bounty hunter fleet and won but it took forever. Is that something tweakable in mods? set the max battlesize high enough to field entire fleets at once and it won't go on for long.
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Aug 6, 2020 22:22
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Strumpie posted:set the max battlesize high enough to field entire fleets at once and it won't go on for long. Yeah because your CPU will melt 
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Aug 6, 2020 22:46
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