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This is actually a Nex Revolutionary Council Ironman run, which is a bit silly because you start hostile to almost everyone and also your faction starts with no colonies at all, so you don't even have anywhere safe to retreat to. Gradually building up your presence from nothing is pretty satisfying, though.
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Aug 9, 2020 17:28
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double postin' to sing the praises of the HMI Locomotive-class mobile station. I salvaged one of these, heavily damaged, from a Legio saturation bombardment fleet I defeated. I was reluctant to use it at first - a punishing 85 deployment cost, high maintenance, high fuel cost, ponderously slow both tactically and strategically, completely unshielded, and also frankly just a bit silly, it seemed like a joke ship. A friend watching me play finally talked me into trying it, and, after spending quite a long time covering it with weapons, I took it for a spin. It's literally a space station with engines on it, so it gets nowhere fast, but put some long-range firepower on it and it doesn't really matter. I kitted out with heavy kinetics - Dong Ultra Autocannons, three of them facing forward - with a battery of Blackrock Extended Gale cannons for armor-cracking, Kadur chemrails for anti-hull work, Hurricane MIRVs as finishers. The flanks are covered in as much PD and anti-small-craft weaponry as I could cram on them, all the side and rear missile slots are packed full of LRMs, and the fighter bays have Xyphos and Revolver support fighters to provide further cover. Integrated Point Defense AI, Armored Weapon Mounts, and Advanced Turret Gyros on everything, then max vents and as many caps as I could fit.  For reference I was flying it alongside an Astral running 4 Daggers/2 Broadswords, a Diable Maelstrom, a Shadowyards Vardr, and assorted smaller ships that I ended up never deploying. Took on a Tri-Tachyon fleet with 2 Paragons, 3 Astrals, and a bunch of smaller ships. This thing poo poo on absolutely everything; the difficult part ended up being getting any kills myself (flying the Vardr). No shields means it can't overload, the rapid repair unit plus armored weapon mounts means its weapons pretty much never went out of commission, and IPDAI plus its copious anti-fighter weaponry meant that bomber attack runs and missile barrages just evaporated before they even approached the armor (also racked up plenty of kills on flanking frigates). It doesn't have the best armor of the big capitals but, in practice, between its extremely long engagement range and excellent PD cover it took hardly any hits, so it barely mattered. Twin-linked Hurricane MIRVs are great finishers and all those LRMs are almost enough to achieve saturation with one ship, but the real stars ended up being those Dong autocannons, which according to the combat analytics accounted for 57% of the ship's total damage output in that battle. It's definitely a sometimes food - very slow plus extremely high fuel consumption equals terrible for long trips, and not even this thing can stand up to a late-game bounty fleet (and forget escaping from an unwanted fight), so if I ever think I'll need to run away this thing is going to stay at home. For fighting off invasions or breaking heavily defended worlds, though, this thing's going to be leading the charge from now on.
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Aug 12, 2020 05:14
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How does that behemoth fare against stations? It seems the lack of shields would hurt it there, especially with 'only' 1k armour. Funnily enough at 34 battle speed, it outruns the Onslaught I found in the second system I explored this run. Had to store that for a while because a beginning explorer can't afford to run an Onslaught...
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Aug 12, 2020 18:09
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It's got sections, so it's inherently janky AF when it comes to taking damage.
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Aug 12, 2020 19:33
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Yeah that 1k armor ends up being a lot more in practice, because unless you're shooting at it from directly in front, you effectively have to work your way through that armor pool 3-4 times. As far as the game is concerned this is actually six ships flying in very close formation, five of which absorb damage for the sixth 'core' ship, and all of which have tough armor and substantial hit points. In theory a player could focus fire on the central section and kill it relatively quickly that way, but the AI usually isn't smart enough to do that, so they basically have to kill it multiple times before it actually stays dead. I haven't tried it against a station yet but I expect it to underperform in AI hands, because it will just sit there facetanking the damage and most of it will go to the central section. Under player control you could rotate it on its axis, hilariously exactly like the station itself, to spread the damage around. e: also note that that's 34 speed with Unstable Injector, after I removed that to improve its range it dropped down to 20 Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Aug 13, 2020 |
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Aug 12, 2020 22:24
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Huh... so after getting nearly 4 million credits from trading and ship bounties, I traded out my wayfarer for a salvage rig, traded out one more hound for another drover, and went to explore a bit outside. Fight some pirates in a pirate trap system (derelicts that have tripwire transmitters on them), found a pirate base system... just looting stuff and making a few trips, a few individual redacted ships. Then I find one of those systems that has the BIG RED WARNING BEACON. gently caress it, go in. I fight a smaller fleet of remnant ships.. probably... 3 destroyers and some frigates. That was a tough fight, lost like 2 hounds but it went okay with sending hounds in hull to retreat. I decide to just stealth about and continue surveying and exploring crap. Looking around the system I find... A habitat station A mining station a small supply cache a weapon cache a 14th battlegroup legion I ended up getting (from above and the fleet I defeated) an alpha core, a beta core, a handful of the other ai cores, a pristine nanoforge, a corrupted nanoforge, some ship blueprint packs, some weapons and drones blueprints, a wide assortment of hullmod blueprints, and I was able to recover a fully functioning 14th battlegroup legion. Is this battlegroup legion going to bankrupt me? Maybe It's about time I started a colony? Maybe I need to start doing the trade shenanigans people talk about. I think I hit the jackpot though as far as single-system finds. I'm having fun puttering around in this game either way. I was figuring I'd get some more money before trying to get something going that could support these expensive ships. BeAuMaN fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Aug 12, 2020 |
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Aug 12, 2020 22:52
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Colonies don't make money for a while so that's not your solution to bankruptcy. Storing that 14 and the pristine or selling the latter if you want to use it.
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Aug 12, 2020 22:57
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Well I probably want to keep it since it's rare? Can't get them anywhere else? I guess storing it works. Will have to see what the storage fees look like.
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Aug 13, 2020 00:07
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Toss it in one of the abandoned stations. No storage fees there and it's perfectly safe.
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Aug 13, 2020 00:22
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raiders stealing from abandoned stations in some future patch is going to be the worst surprise ever
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Aug 13, 2020 00:27
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Bhodi posted:raiders stealing from abandoned stations in some future patch is going to be the worst surprise ever Raiders not only stealing from abandoned stations but also ambushing you with your own stuff and their fleet at the same time.
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Aug 13, 2020 00:52
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raiders recovering your ships after battle and later encountering them again and having to fight the D-modded remnants of your own fleet
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Aug 13, 2020 01:15
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Rynoto posted:Toss it in one of the abandoned stations. No storage fees there and it's perfectly safe. That's hilarious. I assumed otherwise.
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Aug 13, 2020 01:16
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New blog post tomorrow (not new release)
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Aug 13, 2020 04:41
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I'll take it. Blog posts also bring Alex out of the Dev Cave for a forum Q&A afterwards. It's typically a deluge of info for about 2-3 days then he'll go back into hibernation. 2800 words + screenshots. Should be good.
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Aug 13, 2020 04:46
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An Imperium bounty fleet had two of those planet cracker nuke ships. One took out the Pandemonium I was piloting and a nearby friendly Onslaught. It was amazing.
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Aug 13, 2020 06:35
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http://fractalsoftworks.com/2020/08/13/personal-contacts/
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Aug 13, 2020 23:05
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SugarAddict posted:Play with mods and adjust the max fleet settings in the config files, and you too can fight against monstrous deathstack fleets. Can confirm that upping the max fleet size makes for great fun.
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Aug 14, 2020 05:05
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As a general heads up, if you mod the maximum fleet size to ludicrous levels in the interests of having maximum normal spawned fleets (like allowing for 300 AI ships) and you're using Vayra's Sector's player bounties mod you may have some Very Fun (TM) interactions. Such as: raiding a star system into oblivion nets you a 2 million plus bounty and then 50 Astrals, 50 Paragons, a hundred heavy cruisers, and a hundred smaller ships popping up in a bounty hunter fleet. Luddic affiliate bounty hunters have 50 Legions and 50 Onslaughts instead and spawn in three fleets. It took me a year to replace my fleet each time. Even ludicrous mod supercapital ships can only handle so much. I'm not salty, I mess with config files I takes my chances, but learn from the wisdom I have gleaned.
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Aug 14, 2020 08:03
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Cool. More missions, contact system, cool. That said, there is zero news of a) the next update releasing soon and b) anything that indicates that the next update will be almost 1.0 version. So yeah, see you in 2022.
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Aug 14, 2020 09:03
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20 Thrush launchers fill the screen with a lotta bullshit, turns out. 
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Aug 14, 2020 09:06
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FooF posted:If you want another paradigm-shifting thread, take a look at the Broadside Onslaught. I always thought the Onslaught was mediocre but apparently we were all using it wrong. If you forego one side and don't use the Thermal Pulse Cannons, you can make the Onslaught an absolute monster by up-armoring it and just letting it facetank. With skills, it can take an ungodly amount of punishment. The onslaught is a great ship generally? I don't know why anyone would think it's mediocre. There are more flashy capitals out there but for the availability you get a very serviceable capital with the normal lowtech focus towards armour and survivability. The TPCs are a great option especially if you put expanded mags on, the only thing I guess that is a bit iffy about it is it can't bring all three guns forward, but as that design notes you should generally use it slightly angled at least and then bring the front around to dump the TPCs into a target, either as an opener or a finisher. I guess it also carries more guns than it can really power but you also don't need to use shields very often so I think it's geared around being able to vent a lot. Plus the burn drive is a great system. It's certainly a lot of fun as capitals go, the TPCs being always available combined with the turret arcs makes for a quite interesting fighting style and the burn drive combined with the glacial base speed makes for a great contrast. You will have a lot of fun deciding where to charge your face into and even more fun figuring out how likely it is to get you killed, or whether it's going to turn the tide of a fight. Plus the slow turn rate absolutely encourages you to get out of encounters by burning through the enemy line which is wonderfully entertaining. For all that I like the paragon I think the onslaught is probably one of the most fun capitals to drive, because it really encourages you to do something other than sit at max range and plink at stuff. If you're running mods I absolutely recommend slapping as much short range ammo limited weaponry onto it as you can and using it like an oversized enforcer. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Aug 14, 2020 |
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Aug 14, 2020 09:23
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For the first time in this game I have a good system with five planets doing great, producing Paragons and Odysseys, making lots of credits both from colonies and bounties... But the fleet cap is starting to become an issue for preparing my fleet to go do REDACTED fights in high danger systems and such. So I want to have big logistics ships. I've been flying around the core sectors but nobody has normal Atlases for sale, only pirate versions. And I don't have the blueprint. Is there any solid way to get Atlases or their blueprints in the base game?
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Aug 14, 2020 12:49
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unmodded? shopping at or raiding kazeron or sindria would be my suggestion. maybe the big hegemony shipyards if you're running nexerilin then you can despatch agents to buy ships for you. as the big logistics ones are civilian, they're fully legal and thus the missions are very very very hard to fail.
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Aug 14, 2020 13:19
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OwlFancier posted:The onslaught is a great ship generally? I don't know why anyone would think it's mediocre. There are more flashy capitals out there but for the availability you get a very serviceable capital with the normal lowtech focus towards armour and survivability. I've always played the Onslaught by just maxing out armour and plowing straight into the enemy fleet headfirst. I cover the front of it in Reapers so that I can delete whichever enemy Capital is the most threatening and then I just lay into things with the main guns. You can get so much armour on the thing that you don't need to use shields and perfectly safe just Venting in combat when you run out of flux capacity. I only ever turn the shields on if they manage to get through my armour, which they usually only manage if they have a huge concentration of anti-armour weapons or multiple capitals engaging me, and by that point I've done enough damage that I can back off to take potshots while the rest of my fleet handles it.
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Aug 14, 2020 13:39
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cock hero flux posted:I've always played the Onslaught by just maxing out armour and plowing straight into the enemy fleet headfirst. I cover the front of it in Reapers so that I can delete whichever enemy Capital is the most threatening and then I just lay into things with the main guns. You can get so much armour on the thing that you don't need to use shields and perfectly safe just Venting in combat when you run out of flux capacity. I only ever turn the shields on if they manage to get through my armour, which they usually only manage if they have a huge concentration of anti-armour weapons or multiple capitals engaging me, and by that point I've done enough damage that I can back off to take potshots while the rest of my fleet handles it. Yeah it's a great fun ship, I posted this a while back though it uses a modded variant, it's still applicable general theme wise to the vanilla onslaught: OwlFancier posted:So I found a new fun build. It really can facetank a hell of a lot, shields are basically just for if something dumps a massive missile swarm, at you or if you're fetching up against something loaded with hellbores or other heavy armour cracking weapons. Or HILs, they'll still do a number on you.
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Aug 14, 2020 16:19
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So I'm on a bit of a back log kick (which is tragic since Factorio 1.0 just came out) and I'm really getting into Starsector after bouncing off it a few times. I'm at the point of moving up to destroyers and light carriers. I did have a few questions though. If I sell survey information will NPCs colonize the planet? I've found some juicy worlds I would like to go after eventually, but I don't want the AI to snipe them. I remember hearing that if you sell blueprints then the AI will get to use them and I wasn't sure if this was the same. I found a corrupted nanoforge. Is there any way to repair it and turn it into a perfect one? What are the different fighters good for? Since they fly off and do their own thing I often can't watch them to see how well they work.
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Aug 14, 2020 16:38
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Travic posted:So I'm on a bit of a back log kick (which is tragic since Factorio 1.0 just came out) and I'm really getting into Starsector after bouncing off it a few times. I'm at the point of moving up to destroyers and light carriers. I did have a few questions though. There are mods that allow NPCs to colonize(Nexerelin and Vayra's sector), and selling survey data will increase the colonization pace. It's not tied to any of the worlds you've actually surveyed though, NPC colonization targets are random out of all the worlds. Travic posted:I found a corrupted nanoforge. Is there any way to repair it and turn it into a perfect one? Travic posted:What are the different fighters good for? Since they fly off and do their own thing I often can't watch them to see how well they work. There are too many to really say but if you look at how they're armed you should get a good idea. Mostly frag/pd = good anti fighter or wounded ship chasers. Mostly HE = good for large ship strike. Mostly kinetic = good for first strike prior to sending in other units. Etc for the other damage types. Lowen fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Aug 14, 2020 |
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Aug 14, 2020 16:54
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Travic posted:If I sell survey information will NPCs colonize the planet? I've found some juicy worlds I would like to go after eventually, but I don't want the AI to snipe them. I remember hearing that if you sell blueprints then the AI will get to use them and I wasn't sure if this was the same. 1.) No. NPCs don't colonize anything at the moment. Planet Data is purely a way to generate some income. Blueprints, on the other hand, will allow factions (mostly pirates) to use them. Seller beware! 2.) Not at the moment. However, it does give a sizable boost to production for the Heavy Industries in your colonies, even in its corrupted form. It also sells for a pretty penny (and like blueprints, other factions will use them) 3.) Broadly speaking, you have Fighters and Bombers. Fighters don't have to return to the carrier (they loiter around enemies and strafe) but Bombers return to the carrier to reload. Certain fighters like Broadswords are very specific (anti-shield and launching flares) while others, like the Gladius or Thunders are a bit more all-purpose but with low squadron numbers. My personal favorites are Longbows (shoot Sabots), Broadswords (murder shields), Khopesh (best pound-for-pound bomber), and Sparks if you can get them. Bombers can get very expensive and without cover, don't do that well massed.
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Aug 14, 2020 16:58
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There are also some fighters (like broadswords) that are specifically very good at escorting bomber wings, if you recall them and then re-engage them with your bombers once they're reloaded, they will fly in first and drop decoy flares to distract enemy point defence and give your missiles more chance to get through. Experiment, basically. One nice thing is that fighter LPCs take up very little room, so they're easy to stockpile and swapping them out on your carrier is a good way to drastically change the carrier's role. It will still use up some readiness if you do it outside of a dock, sadly, but of all the in-space refits it's probably the one you might most want to do sometimes. You can load up the simulator and just try different fighter builds out and watch how they go at your leisure if you want. Oh and the other thing to watch out for with fighters is crew usage. Fighters have different crew requirements which means if they get shot down (and they will get shot down, usually in large numbers) they have a chance to lose the crew required to operate the fighter. This is part of the incentive not to get them all killed, along with it taking time to replace them in battle. But there are also some fighters which are unmanned, and if you want to use a lot of fighters they are very appealing because you can just drown the enemy in unmanned drones. There are in particular some very good drone fighters you can find through exploring the sector. I think all the exploration-acquired drone fighters are great IMO, so that's a good starting point. And honestly a good finishing point too, I mostly use those in my fleet except for some very high end craft. They're cheap and effective. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Aug 14, 2020 |
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Aug 14, 2020 17:55
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Thanks for the replies. I completely forgot about the simulator. Though I guess I'll need to simulate a helper ship since it seems like fighters are more about supporting larger ships than they are killing stuff on their own.
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Aug 14, 2020 18:12
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I've had good results just placing an improvised hangar in every craft that can hold one and using the cheapest manned fighter craft, I forgot their name. They're VERY good for their cost in DP, and only require you to carry some extra crew around to replace the casualties.
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Aug 14, 2020 18:13
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Best part about mass fighters is during the first phase of a fight when your respective fighters and strike craft sally out and you absolutely obliterate the enemy strike craft with yours. Putting em on the backfoot from there on out helps alot.
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Aug 14, 2020 18:35
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Watching entire fleet of capital ships go up in flame to three Herons fill with nothing but piranha and a handful of escort ships never gets old.
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Aug 14, 2020 19:14
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my dad posted:I've had good results just placing an improvised hangar in every craft that can hold one and using the cheapest manned fighter craft, I forgot their name. They're VERY good for their cost in DP, and only require you to carry some extra crew around to replace the casualties. recently? only reason i ask is because this used to be amazing, and talons had a 0op cost. now the improvised hangar's been nerfed a bit - bombers cost more, fighters are shitter - and talons actually cost something to install. i tend to go dedicated-carrier-heavy a lot these days rather than improvised.
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Aug 14, 2020 19:27
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I've only played the latest version, so yes. They die like flies, but they deal a hell of a lot of damage for a light fighter. I assume they're not as good as they used to be, but they're still very good. Mind you, I do safety override AND improvized hangars on most of my ships, which creates a rather odd fleet.
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Aug 14, 2020 19:33
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Talons still have a vulcan on them so they are going to be very high DPS against anything unshielded and unarmoured, the issue is yeah, they die really fast. I think one of the general stuff mods adds what is basically a derelict drone talon, the brattice I think it's called. I don't use them because I prefer the MG armed derelict drones but they might be fun if you enjoy that sort of thing. There's also the kamikaze talons which I think are a HMI addition.
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Aug 14, 2020 19:38
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OwlFancier posted:Talons still have a vulcan on them so they are going to be very high DPS against anything unshielded and unarmoured, the issue is yeah, they die really fast. True, but 0.9 added minimum armor for hull (5% of whatever armor you bring into battle) and Vulcans, by virtue of being Frag and only doing 25 damage/shot anyway, get reduced to nothing quickly. Even against 25 hull armor (500 base armor - "Destroyer-grade"): Damage/shot = 25(6.25/(6.25+25) = 5. Granted, that's still 100 dmg/sec for a paltry 20 flux/sec but even small amounts of armor will keep the Vulcan to small fractions of its "raw" damage. With Impact Mitigation 1 (+150 armor), Vulcans will get reduced to the damage floor (3.75/shot) immediately, though so will most low damage/shot weapons. It's kind of broken skill right now.
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Aug 14, 2020 20:04
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Travic posted:Thanks for the replies. I completely forgot about the simulator. Though I guess I'll need to simulate a helper ship since it seems like fighters are more about supporting larger ships than they are killing stuff on their own. While you can indeed use them in a supporting role, carriers are also perfectly viable as your fleet's main damage-dealers if you build around it. An Astral with 4 wings of bombers and a couple wings of Broadswords for escort duty, with a properly skilled officer in command, is a 'delete enemy ship' button. I like to run a minimum of two carriers at once, one loaded with bombers to strike enemy warships and one loaded with fighters to take down enemy strike craft; often more. Use Fighter Strike orders to focus down specific enemy ships, and have your main battle line maintain pressure on the enemy and keep them a safe distance away from your carriers, and your bombers will rack up kills. OwlFancier posted:The onslaught is a great ship generally? I don't know why anyone would think it's mediocre. There are more flashy capitals out there but for the availability you get a very serviceable capital with the normal lowtech focus towards armour and survivability. Shadowyards has a capital ship called a Vardr which is essentially 'what if the Onslaught was a high-tech ship?', and it's loads of fun. It's got a similar weapon layout (except energy instead of ballistic), and forward-mounted TPC equivalents - where it gets interesting is where it differs; better shields, less armor, and instead of a burn drive, its ship system vastly increases its maneuverability for a few seconds, allowing it to turn extremely quickly. It's so much fun to flip that on and whip around to unload a full barrage into a flanking frigate's face. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Aug 14, 2020 |
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Aug 14, 2020 20:15
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| # ? Apr 20, 2024 04:47 |
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PSA: If you're just starting a new modded playthrough, remember to disable Dasssault's blade breakers faction. It's not so much that they're a difficult fight (they can be), but that there's absolutely no rewards for fighting them at all.
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Aug 14, 2020 23:50
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