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I tried this game out a bit on normal, seems interesting. I have a bunch of questions. Are Shepherds supposed to be the best early game ship? They're cheap, have decent cargo, low upkeep, low deployment cost, decent logistical perks, and an infinite swarm of disposable drones that eat frigates for breakfast and drag down destroyers and cruisers into the mud eventually, and can also mount disgustingly powerful torpedoes for when they need some extra punch. I'm placing reinforced hulls and bulkheads on every ship. I figured that being able to easily recover from a costly fight is better that winning fights slightly harder. Am I wasting ordnance points? Is there ever a reason not to give combat ships converted hangars and wasp drones? 18 ordnance points seems like a steal given how much havoc they can cause. I've replaced some of my Shepherds with pirate mules that have annihilator missile pods, torpedoes, and heavy armor, they seem to work pretty well in conjunction with a giant swarm of drones, and have a low sensor profile that lets me sneak around on the strategic map. Can I intentionally inflict specific D-mods on my ships? There's some stuff I really don't care about having damaged, and the reduced deployment cost seems like a good deal.
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Oct 2, 2019 15:43
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Holy poo poo Luddic Path ships. I love the LP Cerberus even more than I love the Shepard. The AI can use it pretty well.
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Oct 4, 2019 17:21
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Any advice for colony management? My luddic cerberus and brawler swarm backed by improvized hegemony buffalo carriers with wasp drones let me complete the story missions, so after exploding a bunch of robot ships, now I have an alpha core, a pristine nanoforge, and a planetary shield schematic, and the planet I found the shield on seems pretty neat, too, so I figure it's probably the time to start a colony.
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Oct 8, 2019 10:31
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Thanks, guys, I could have made a pretty big mistake by placing my colonies alone in different stars systems. I think I've found a good candidate. How do you go about making your battleplans? I mean, it's going to depend on your general fleet build, of course, but here's how I've generally been going about with my fleet in serious battles, and want to hear if you have an idea on how to improve it: Step 1: Send in a number of kitey ships to find the enemy. Generally, stuff that can avoid getting caught by destroyers, won't die too quickly to frigates, and can plink away at the enemy from a distance while I'm not paying attention to them. I try to mark most of the enemy fleet with the avoid tag, using 1, very rarely 2 command points. I let my frigates get slowly pushed towards the deployment zone, hopefully waiting for a portion of the enemy fleet to separate from the rest. Step 2: I evaluate the situation. If I think I can overwhelm the enemy with brute force, I skip to step 5. If not, I send in the "line" portion of my fleet. This varied a lot as the game went, but I generally have a giant interceptor swarm following it around, because it's just that bloody useful. Eventually I also added a pair of valkyries loaded up with the nav beacon and the ecm booster and some drones - at 3 deployment points each, it's a bargain and boosts my whole fleet. I tell the faster ships to escort the slower ones, and tell the slower ones to head towards the easiest to attack portion of the enemy fleet. As they get closer, I remove the "avoid" and "escort" orders as needed to properly engage the enemy. Ideally, the step 1 ships are distracting the enemy fleet by being juuuuust out of their range. (seriously, I love restored luddic cerberus so much, it's got the punch of a destroyer and surprisingly good armor, but has the size, speed, and logistical footprint of a frigate, and also has 100 cargo capacity - sure it gets utterly owned by EMP damage because it has no shield, but that also means it can't ever overload no matter how dumb the AI decides to be, and the stuff that usually murders shieldless ships just can't keep up with them - 2 of them can tear apart a distracted robot cruiser, and with the help of a few brawlers with reapers in what looked like a green and red murder carousel they took out the robot battleship guarding the red planet pretty fast)  Step 3: I evaluate the situation. If I think I can overwhelm the enemy with brute force, I skip to step 5. If not, I send in some of my Step 4: At this, point, I estimate how many torpedoes I have left, how much deployment time my ships have, and how strong the enemy is. If I feel like I've pretty much already won, I skip the next step. If I'm running out ammo and deployment, but the battle hasn't been decided yet, I slowly disengage, and redeploy for round 2 of the battle and go back to step 1. If it's do or die time, or I've reached this step the second time around, I proceed to the next step. Step 5: DEPLOY EVERYTHING. TOGGLE FULL ASSAULT. SELECT EVERY SHIP AND RIGHT CLICK ON THE DEALIEST SHIP IN THE ENEMY FLEET. KILL IT. MOVE ON TO THE NEXT. NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER, DEATH OR GLORY! Step 6: Mop up. Retreat ships that are in danger of destruction or losing combat readiness, try to cut off enemy retreat paths if possible, and hunt the enemy down. If there's a pursuit phase, 2-3 luddic ships do a great job at it in the autoresolve. Final step would be, I guess, hosing down the blood and guts off the walls of the inevitable partially exploded cerberi, and recrewing them. They rack up a bunch of d-mods over time, but that mostly just makes them cheaper to deploy and maintain. I don't really manually control ships, I'm too focused on the whole battle. I do regularly redeploy my captain to different ships as needed to help them out, however, but keep the ships on autopilot unless I think I can reeeeally make a difference. I only spent 4 points in combat skills - 1 on the branch itself, then evasive action 1, impact mitigation 1, and target analysis 1, but the impression I get is that they make a pretty big impact on survivability of ships (and taking out engines or large weapons can turn the tide of a close fight)
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Oct 8, 2019 21:00
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I've started another run, trying to play without savescumming, and then another when my habits from my first run got me fleet-wiped repeatedly. Lesson 1: Know when to fold 'em. Lesson 2: Overdriving militarized civilian ships is the single best way not to lose them when you have to run for it. Everything else you place on them is secondary. Lesson 3: Do not go over 120 DP fleet size until you've got a spare fleet stored somewhere. Automated ships is a great mod because I can tell my leaderless luddic ships to go berserk, and my leaderless carriers to stay the gently caress away from combat. Autoretreat after taking heavy damage or running out of deployment time is nice too (and so is being able to deactivate it if I don't want it), since I do it manually anyway when I notice it, and now I can focus on flying my ship instead of constantly having to babysit my fleet. my dad fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Oct 20, 2019 |
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Oct 20, 2019 21:00
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No savescumming adventure update: Pirate mules are awesome.  In the SIM, 8 of them (56DP) killed the Paragon without losses, the 3 heavy cruisers without losses (took loving forever, tho, had ~10%CR left), the 2 onslaughts without losses, and a fleet of ~80DP worth of small frigates with 2 losses, and a similar DP worth of destroyers with 1 loss. A sufficient number of carriers will whittle them down eventually, but can still lose if I focus them down one by one. I guess the reason they work so well is that everything trying to attack them has to go through fighters first, then actually hit something moving at 160 speed, then go through omni shields, then go through a respectable amount of armor, then take down a ridiculous amount of hull, and do it all while the mules are cycling in and out to protect eachother, while the blaster and the fighters stack hard flux on you, and then combine blasters, missiles, and vulcans to tear you to pieces. You'll start running out of CR pretty quick in a longer fight, but you never actually have to take fights you don't want to because the mules can also run away from anything that can kill them, and survive fighting anything that can catch up to them. Make sure you have crew to spare though. Good thing nobody asks questions about what happened to the previous batch of employees. Also, looking at how the economy system works in the game and testing it out, am I correct in assuming that the best way to make a quick buck is to do an imperialism? Find a stable planet that can feed itself but imports everything else, blow up its starports while your transponder is off, wait for them to stop being suspicious, and then enjoy being their only supplier? Tested it out on one of the Luddic Path planets, and it moved my profit margins from "huge" to "ludicrous" as I bought crewmen and ore while selling soldiers, weapons, drugs, supplies, fuel, organs, and machinery. my dad fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Oct 26, 2019 |
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Oct 26, 2019 12:50
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Larry Parrish posted:someone make a gimmick weapon that is a drone launcher like some mod factions have but its Luddic Path and it uses your crew as ammo. the sprite is just a tiny man riding an antimatter capsule like a cartoon rocket
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Nov 4, 2019 22:01
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It doesn't list ruins on colonized worlds (you can't explore these anyway), it lists ruins on uncolonized worlds in the pre-explored core systems. It's a nice early boost, especially if you get the relevant industry skill, but isn't anything gamebreaking, and you can just track them down without the mod anyway.
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Nov 6, 2019 10:32
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Don't forget to set your flagship to autopilot if you do so, though.
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Nov 25, 2019 17:35
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They're not great, but I found a place for them in some SO builds.
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Dec 6, 2019 20:57
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Giant space shotguns do a good enough job most of the time, in my experience.
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Jan 25, 2020 08:31
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No, I mean devastators, I don't play with major gameplay altering mods. One of the reasons why I like Conquests with a dedicated PD side so much.
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Jan 25, 2020 08:45
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OwlFancier posted:Oh, hmm. I guess they'd probably work OK on the torpedoes. Would still be a really unpleasant fight having constant waves of them shat at you, you have to get lucky every time etc. You do want them paired with some pinpoint pd weaponry to take out any lucky ordnance that makes it past, yeah. However, the big reason for using devastators is that they'll usually land a bunch of shots on the bomber/fighter swarm before they teleport away, and a pair of devastators usually scores several kills, in addition to greatly thinning out the ordnance.
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Jan 25, 2020 09:00
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Kitfox88 posted:I wish beam weapons didn't do soft damage to shields, it makes using them kind of a pain in the rear end but I like discos Beam weapons you either go all in or you don't go at all (unless it's a single autofire tac/grav to troll the AI into keeping its shields up all the time)
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Feb 1, 2020 19:54
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You can only get better at flying with practice. By all means, do leave your flagship on autopilot if it's doing better than you, but get some fast, expendable ship with shields with mostly forward facing guns to practice flying with and switch to it. Lasher (if I remember the name right) is OK for this. Two commands that the most useful at first: - "avoid" which you place on big, slow, powerful enemy ships that you don't want to fight until you've softened up the rest of the enemy fleet, and you can cancel that command at any time without spending a command point on it. - selecting your whole fleet (or whatever large portion of it is close enough to be relevant) and right clicking on an exposed ship that's strayed away from support to kill it quickly, your ships will be a bit more reckless than usual and focus more on closing in and attacking than defending themselves. Again, you can cancel that command at any time without spending a command point if it doesn't work out. e: honorary mention to the escort command. It's doesn't work quite the way you'd think it does, though, so it's generally better to start with the above two commands. my dad fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Feb 1, 2020 |
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Feb 1, 2020 20:26
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Oh, right, yeah, the retreat command. It's a bit of a command point hog in bigger battles, but if a ship is taking damage and is badly outmatched, tell it to run the gently caress away. You can cancel it if the enemy stops pursuing and if the ship can still contribute to the fight when it has backup.
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Feb 1, 2020 20:57
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DatonKallandor posted:Hopefully the spoiler skill in the upcoming version that gives beams hard flux at the cost of range is going to make it to release. That's certainly one way to make safety override beam boats more viable. 
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Feb 1, 2020 20:59
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Rarely worth it, it's usually cheaper to buy a new ship. Luddic Path ships are worth restoring, especially when you first buy them, to get rid of that one D-mod used to balance them.
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Feb 5, 2020 18:16
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Plek posted:Yeah the storms are a mild inconvenience until you're dragging some capitals around and then it becomes annoying. Having a 'terrain' of sorts to navigate through is a great idea, I just wish it mattered. Even the AI just plows through the poo poo. I'd like navigating them more if the galactic map version that shows you the clouds wasn't so loving ugly to look at.
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Feb 6, 2020 21:46
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I mean, the debuff they give your planets is relatively harmless, as long as you've set your economy up right and have enough patrols to keep the actual invasions from doing any damage or pather ships sneaking past to do a terrorism.
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Feb 12, 2020 19:30
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timn posted:Edit: Put your colony in the same system as a redacted murder station and never worry about having visitors again. Just don't build patrols there, or they'll eventually kill the murder station. And get used to having merchant fleets sniped every once in a while.
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Feb 12, 2020 20:14
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Mules really shine as beefy, adaptable, stealthy, fast, easy to maintain, cheap to replace cargo ships that can actually fight. Gemini... It's better than the Mule as an individual ship in pretty much every aspect, but inferior to just using more Mules in your fleet. Later on, you absolutely want dedicated specialized hauler ships that you don't send into the fight, but they're a risky luxury in the early game.
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May 10, 2020 14:42
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I'm the same, for the most part, except I calculate "does this ship limit my fleet somehow" and "what if things go wrong somehow" into the equation. Once you're good at correctly estimated fleet strengths and avoiding the ones you can't fight, buffalos are great, especially the Hegemony ones, since they come pre-militarized. But while you're still unsure, having combat capable freighters as an OHSHIT button when you realize you hosed up can be a lifesaver.
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May 10, 2020 20:16
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At the start (and for quite a while, a year ingame maybe?), most random enemy fleets have their max DP limited based on your fleet's DP. You'll have an easier start with a smaller number of DP efficient ships and slowly growing when you feel comfortable instead of rushing to go big fast. Shepherds and, if you can get your hands on them and restore them, Luddic path Cerberi, when working together, are probably the densest concentration of range+cargo+combat+utility you can get in the early game, with the Mules deserving an honorary mention.
my dad fucked around with this message at 21:15 on May 10, 2020 |
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May 10, 2020 21:11
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Note that fleet size for most ingame calculations is based off of your ships' total deployment cost, not the total number of ships. A fleet of a bunch of cheap ships can easily stay under the cap for disengaging, while just a few capitals will go over it. You do have a hard cap of 20? ships in your fleet at any one time. e: Taerkar posted:Shepherds are combination mini haulers and tankers with bonus support functions. They're not combat craft but they can support better with their drones than a full freighter can. I tend to put salamanders into the universal slot to add to that functionality. Or a similar mod missile with unlimited ammo. Alternatively, stick a reaper in there. They'll almost never fire it, but just the potential for it scares the bejeezus out of enemies and creates a bit of a zone of denial around a large flock of shepherds. my dad fucked around with this message at 17:45 on May 20, 2020 |
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May 20, 2020 17:41
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gently caress COREY PERRY posted:(e.g. you can probably buy an Apogee from the Tri-Tachyon black market somewhere) It's not a bad idea to take the advanced start that gives you an Apogee, since the ship is really loving expensive for a newbie otherwise. It is very much its intended role to be the flagship of a fleet of smaller ships. And you don't ever really need more than one. Just be aware that until you can find the right weaponry and modifications for it, it's somewhat subpar in combat.
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May 27, 2020 17:16
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Brickship still has its uses, but yeah, not really worth it anymore most of the time.
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May 28, 2020 17:13
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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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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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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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If you want a large fighting ship that can keep up with your fleet, find a Falcon(P). It can provide a lot of missile support and tank for you without slowing you down.
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Aug 7, 2020 02:48
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A mod I'd suggest newer players is that one that removes the level cap, and reduces how quickly XP requirements scale. That way, you won't feel extreme pressure about picking a suboptimal skill. You still won't get anywhere near having all of them, unless you play A LONG time, though.
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Aug 7, 2020 14:48
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Which fighters/bombers were used? What was the loadout? What were the fleets? I'm rather skeptical of the Condor doing better than the Drover, if both were done right, and that's on top of Drovers being better fleet ships outside of battle.
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Aug 8, 2020 12:12
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A big ironman adaptation is having to learn which ships can escape from an unwanted fight on their own, which ones have to be built around it, and which ones just can't. e: Having some logistics stuff stashed away safe on a station is never a bad idea, though. Salvaged a lovely ship with so many D-Mods it won't even sell well? Stash it away, you'll love how much better it is than "nothing at all"
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Aug 8, 2020 17:45
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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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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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Demiurge4 posted:Where do I go for the crazy Luddic Path mods? I've been fighting them and capturing ships but they only have D mods, not any special Luddic ones. I'm using a lot of mods though so a bunch of these ships aren't vanilla. The Luddic Path ships come with safety overrides built-in. That's 15/30/45 free ordnance points, assuming you wanted safery overrides on the ship. One of the D mods is actually really bad and limited to the Luddic Path in order to balance their ships. But you can remove it by restoring the ship, while keeping the free safety override. e: If it existed, a Luddic Path Mule would probably be my favorite early game ship. 
my dad fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Aug 16, 2020 |
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Aug 16, 2020 19:24
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Strumpie posted:psst, hey buddy. for the cause. Very nice.
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Aug 17, 2020 08:32
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Note that the following things will attract attacks even from people you are friendly with: Having the colony be a free port (everyone hates this) Having the colony produce and sell any resource that earns you money, no matter how little it is (from whoever else is producing it) Using AI cores (this one is for Hegemony only) You can let your colony handle the first 2 kinds on their own without pissing anyone off, or you can intercept them with your transponder off. This works for all 3. Hegemony will take your colony defending itself from the AI inspection as an act of war, so you have to fight that one yourself if you want to stay in good graces with them. The way I set up my colonies in a system is that I don't build anything on them but support stuff until I've grown the colony population a bit. That way, you only have to deal with pirate attacks for a while, and no other threat. Once you have a defensible setup, THEN, when you're ready, you do as much as possible at the same time. Start manufacturing the basic resources, make every planet in the system a free port, and use every AI core you have on them, the gammas and betas to reduce structure upkeep, alphas to give you extra governors and then to boost your most important stuff with the spare ones. To do the above, you're best off finding a good system with multiple planets. You don't need to have every resource there, but the more diverse the stuff there, the better. e: I also try to befriend the pirates with quests so that I don't have to bother with them in the initial colony setup stage, but I won't blame you for not going through that tedium.
my dad fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Aug 21, 2020 |
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Aug 21, 2020 09:41
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 15:55 |
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IIRC, that's how it used to work when your colonies were counted for the global consumption. Now, only the core planets count for that. So, you can't actually grow the overall economy, you can only increase your share in it (meaning that you hit serious diminishing returns as you provide more and more of a product to the galactic market) and reduce the overall economy by damaging the core planets. So gamma cores are never bad per se now, and will help you in case one of your trade convoys gets destroyed. For maximum money, you want the core sector to be prosperous and with strong enough fleets to fight off pirates. As much as you might hate those factions otherwise. my dad fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Aug 21, 2020 |
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Aug 21, 2020 10:07
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