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Raine
Apr 30, 2013

ACCELERATIONIST SUPERDOOMER



Zudgemud posted:

Aside from sprinting it pretty (spriting custom large stuff takes forever if you want it pretty) this would actually be very easy to make in a barebones way.

So easy in fact that I made it for you in the most rudimentary way.

So no pretty sprite for the ship or gun, no fancy custom beam effect and no bombardment cost reduction. Just a vanilla hull and fake tachyon lance with dumb stats. The blueprint should in theory be dropped randomly in exploration but I sure have not bothered to test that or anything except laser color.

To finish it just grab some free to use sprite in the modding subforum and/or make one yourself/have one made for you with copious cut and paste in Photoshop. Then use the "Starsector Ship&Weapon Editor" that can be found pinned in the modding subforum to edit the hull etc. Custom fluff descriptions for your things can be modified in the descriptions.csv within the strings folder.

:hellyeah:

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SugarAddict
Oct 11, 2012

Larry Parrish posted:

The mod he's using there is part of VIC, they have these buildings in their markets that let you change portraits for you and your officers. I think they offer a growth bonus too, but idk.

Galaga Galaxian posted:

What mod lets you change the portraits of officers?



You need to open it up in a separate window so you can read everything for the memes.




(no that's not the actual tooltip in game I used another mod to alter it)

SpaceDrake
Dec 22, 2006

I can't avoid filling a game with awful memes, even if I want to. It's in my bones...!

Galaga Galaxian posted:

Can't there just be a nice little mod that changes portraits? Not part of a big mod pack full of stuff I'm not that interested in? :sigh:

You can literally enter the campaign.xml with a text editor and change portraits that way :v:

Just search for fid="player"

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

Ugh i literally explored an another corner of the map and no luck with a good system--i bet the good ones are right near the center and it's punishing me. Got a sweet exploratory fleet though we're chugging along with abuncha cruisers and light destroyers with accompanying super freighters and now 1 phase freighter. We're at 3.3 supplies a day with 32 fuel per LY but if there's salvage i usually get a surplus back with my skills. The phase freighter is officially cool, it's basically a non combat useful phase ship to have in your ship. It reduces your signature significantly and is a good balance for the other baggage train ships. I already found a legion that i got story point free so once i get a colony system i'm gonna rock that.

I love the shrikes they're pretty much the medusa of old, 1 ion pulser, LR PD in the center, 2 IR pulse lasers on the flank, big torpedo on the prow with 2 mining lasers on the rear. The ion pulser will loving destroy ships if it hits and they're so quick that they can dart in, EMP all the systems then shoot a torpedo into the opening. They punch above their weight so much i might actually do a 4 capital center with shrikes since if they overextend and die it's not a big deal to get them back.

Mercrom
Jul 17, 2009
For some reason I thought the phase ship nerfs would make the ziggy less broken. With the new phase anchor hullmod, 2 heavy needlers and the 2 Rift Cascade Emitters I managed to find it feels dumber than ever.

lollontee
Nov 4, 2014
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!

Zudgemud posted:

Aside from sprinting it pretty (spriting custom large stuff takes forever if you want it pretty) this would actually be very easy to make in a barebones way.

So easy in fact that I made it for you in the most rudimentary way.

So no pretty sprite for the ship or gun, no fancy custom beam effect and no bombardment cost reduction. Just a vanilla hull and fake tachyon lance with dumb stats. The blueprint should in theory be dropped randomly in exploration but I sure have not bothered to test that or anything except laser color.

To finish it just grab some free to use sprite in the modding subforum and/or make one yourself/have one made for you with copious cut and paste in Photoshop. Then use the "Starsector Ship&Weapon Editor" that can be found pinned in the modding subforum to edit the hull etc. Custom fluff descriptions for your things can be modified in the descriptions.csv within the strings folder.

dear god have mercy on the filthiest of monitors, abused and never cleaned

Inexplicable Humblebrag
Sep 20, 2003

the monitor paid for this. it's enjoying it. black leather straps holding it in place

Raine
Apr 30, 2013

ACCELERATIONIST SUPERDOOMER



i might gently caress around and see if i can get a handle on the coding and photoshop a barebones hull the size i want for testing

i'm pretty good at reverse engineering similar designs so i'll find a ship system that fires a superweapon while anchoring and go from there. also figure out how to make the stream of solar death more solid, visibly flowing forward, and shooting sparks at a forward diagonal off each side of the stream

maybe add a faint humming sound somewhere in-between the charge and activation

then read every piece of lore relating to domain gates and think up some descriptions

Atopian
Sep 23, 2014

I need a security perimeter with Venetian blinds.

lollontee posted:

dear god have mercy on the filthiest of monitors, abused and never cleaned

"Sir- incoming hostiles burning hard. Big ones. Count two. No, three. More... there's too many! High energy read. Contact in six."

Raine
Apr 30, 2013

ACCELERATIONIST SUPERDOOMER



wait i just realized the way the ship is portrayed in combat is the same as the fleet/codex/mission/refit appearance as well. a gate top down might actually look real fuckin dumb there. poo poo.

it will have to be drastically altered to not look dumb as hell. maybe some rounded shielding on the back end \__________/ to kinda ensure the solar ejection can only go one way

then the big rear end thrusters and intricate engineering to fill it out. thinking about 3 pilot bays evenly spaced on both ends and the center (which will also be the bridge the ship is piloted from)

maybe like 30AP can be given with those 3 fighter bays as the only defense for the ship. that also allows a variant file with 3 undecided 10AP wings so the player colony can actually produce the ship

Raine fucked around with this message at 13:32 on Jan 1, 2022

Zudgemud
Mar 1, 2009
Grimey Drawer

lollontee posted:

dear god have mercy on the filthiest of monitors, abused and never cleaned

A follower of the true faith would never care about the wellbeing of technology, brother Livewell has been notified about your apostasy.

Raine posted:

i might gently caress around and see if i can get a handle on the coding and photoshop a barebones hull the size i want for testing

i'm pretty good at reverse engineering simila so i'll find a ship system that fires a superweapon while anchoring and go from there. also figure out how to make the stream of solar death more solid, visibly flowing forward, and shooting sparks at a forward diagonal off each side of the stream

maybe add a faint humming sound somewhere in-between the charge and activation

then read every piece of lore relating to domain gates and think up some descriptions

If you open the weapon file in a text editor you will see that it has lines such as width which sets beam width, RGB codes for beam colors and weapon glow, scroll speed which is how fast the texture should animate and other self explanatory stuff. The thing you are looking for is "texture type=rough" which is basically the sprite texture of the beam. The High Intensity Laser from vanilla has another texture type that is smoother so you can try that. If you want to do a custom beam that too is quite simple and you can look at the dsi-laser from the P9 mod for a reference to how to add that and custom sounds (make a sprite or sound and add the reference file path).

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Now I am imagining the luddites are just the filth peasants from holy grail except on spaceships and they're angry about technology instead of monarchy.

Zudgemud
Mar 1, 2009
Grimey Drawer

Raine posted:

wait i just realized the way the ship is portrayed in combat is the same as the fleet/codex/mission/refit appearance as well. a gate top down might actually look real fuckin dumb there. poo poo.

it will have to be drastically altered to not look dumb as hell. maybe some rounded shielding on the back end \__________/ to kinda ensure the solar ejection can only go one way

Solar radiation and particles going through a portal gate would presumably be directional and just go in one direction anyway, can't transport things through it otherwise.

However, if you make the weapon into a ship system based on the vanilla flare you can make a ship system fire in both directions by just having two weapon mounts, one pointing forward and one backwards, and then set them to system type (the old ship I made for you had one such mount pointing backwards to eject the flares). So you can just add the laser instead of the flare missile and then it will shoot a beam from both ends. The AI would still handle it like a flare, but you could probably copy a custom AI from some other mod with system guns to make it handle it correctly.

If you want to make it more fun to aquire the mobile gate you can very easily make it into a bounty quest with magiclib's magic bounty system where one basically just fill in a form specifying triggers, targets, story and rewards.

Kris xK
Apr 23, 2010
I keep restarting to add even more mods. Currently up to 71.

It's Rimworld all over again.

Please send help.

Zurai
Feb 13, 2012


Wait -- I haven't even voted in this game yet!

Kris xK posted:

I keep restarting to add even more mods. Currently up to 71.

It's Rimworld all over again.

Please send help.

That would be like one drowning man shoving another under the water in an instinctive effort to push themselves into the air. What I'm saying is: me too.

Complications
Jun 19, 2014

Kris xK posted:

I keep restarting to add even more mods. Currently up to 71.

It's Rimworld all over again.

Please send help.

[throws a red and white painted anvil at the drowning man]

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

Is there something in the code that hints at habitable planets? I'm seriously have a hard time finding a system to colonize and i've scanned over a quarter of the drat map so far. Also it's hosed up that you don't have a 'go slow' button because hitting asteroids is so loving annoying but unless you're on auto pilot you can't go slow with your transponder on. I'll see a derelict in thule and try to salvage it and hit 3 loving rocks on the way there.

The battle AI is so confusing, some times it's amazing and you'll be experiencing BSG moments where your legion is blasting away and owning things other times your superior force decides to split up to the corners of the map and lose battles that they should have won. This loving pirate SALVAGE fleet killed my fleet multiple times because they'd group up and hit my lone ships with waves of fighters. I told everyone to wolf pack up and you'd still get things like a shrike deciding to burn into the center of the enemy fleet then get overwhelmed and die. I said gently caress it and now i'm exploring in force with my legion, 2 apogees, and soon to be 3 herons because fighter superiority is king.

Taerkar
Dec 7, 2002

kind of into it, really

Hold down S while you travel to go slow, though it can stop you if you don't have an autopilot destination active. Either have a destination already in or hold down the mouse as well to manually steer.

It really should be a toggle.

Xand_Man
Mar 2, 2004

If what you say is true
Wutang might be dangerous


Arghy posted:

Is there something in the code that hints at habitable planets? I'm seriously have a hard time finding a system to colonize and i've scanned over a quarter of the drat map so far. Also it's hosed up that you don't have a 'go slow' button because hitting asteroids is so loving annoying but unless you're on auto pilot you can't go slow with your transponder on. I'll see a derelict in thule and try to salvage it and hit 3 loving rocks on the way there.

There is a go slow button, it cuts your speed in half. Check the key commands.
Beaten

For habitable planets, they are mostly around Orange and Yellow stars; there's a pretty good chance that Red Warning Beacon systems have one as well.

If it's a major problem, using the Old system generation option will give you more habitable worlds.

The cheaty way is to search your save file for the 'habitable' string

Xand_Man fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Jan 2, 2022

Gobblecoque
Sep 6, 2011
Be sure to check the exploration tab in your intel screen, it keeps all those little hints you'll stumble across while exploring derelicts, ruins, and drones. Sometimes it'll be free survey data that will say "hey there's a habitable world in x system." Info on things like ruins and stations can also indicate a higher chance of nearby habitable worlds.

BitBasher
Jun 6, 2004

You've got to know the rules before you can break 'em. Otherwise, it's no fun.


Arghy posted:

Is there something in the code that hints at habitable planets? I'm seriously have a hard time finding a system to colonize and i've scanned over a quarter of the drat map so far.

Your save may not even have an ideal system to settle. Mine sure didn't this save. I had to settle for decent, and only then after a lot of looking around. Sometimes you have to suck it up and take the best of what's left, Hot Shots style.

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

I didn't realize how lucky i was in my first game to get 4 planets with 1 being a waterworld--there's a few low hazard planets i've found but they're alone and near junk stuff. Ideally i wanna get multiple planets in a system or good planets 1 star over.

Gobblecoque posted:

Be sure to check the exploration tab in your intel screen, it keeps all those little hints you'll stumble across while exploring derelicts, ruins, and drones. Sometimes it'll be free survey data that will say "hey there's a habitable world in x system." Info on things like ruins and stations can also indicate a higher chance of nearby habitable worlds.

Yeah i hit a huge string of probes and they gave me some free stuff but it was pretty bleak. I'm doing an expanding circle now since i think the systems on the edge of the core have the best chances for giving good planets.

Wind Tempest
Oct 9, 2007

I am the culmination of all that is wrong with japan.
Shamelessly posting my mod for people interested in a simple ship/weapon pack.

https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=21717.0

Can't vouch for balance yet, but I am trying to match the Vanilla experience.

Kris xK
Apr 23, 2010
Holy gently caress ED Shipyard's Basenji Explorer and Dalmatian Feighter are op as gently caress in the best possible way.

With 3 of the Basenji and 2 Dalmatians I've got 6k/6k/6k+ cargo/fuel/crew, 1.7 daily supply, 16 base burn, 11 slow burn, 2k sensor and a regular profile of 113, dropping to 40 if I go dark.

Literally the only thing missing is a salvage rig.

Oh, and any sort of weapon whatsoever. I've got to stash story points for when I eventually get caught out.

Disclaimer: I have all the relevant skills and 2 hullmods giving me +3 burn total.

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

Found a dream system, no negative mods hazard 100 tundra planet with food and organics but no minerals so i can use soil nanites. It's got 5 planets total with 3 of them being airless with very hot so i can turn them into fuel/refinery/military HQ with that item. The only down side is no volatiles and it's a good 1k fuel back to the core worlds so i'm gonna colonize 3-4 of them then go back to making money in the core with only 1 of them on hazard pay at a time. This way i'll only have to run back to install items and save them from raids.

I got that midline battle cruiser and it's rear end, such a weird setup and it's extremely fragile. My legion continues to be the rock that anchors every battle, i just fought a lost battle because i wanted to see how my fleet would perform against 4 pirate fleets and the legion sat in the middle of it all just loving dishing out punishment while literally the entire pirate fleet just encircled it. I wanna give the other BC a try because i love me some battle carriers but honestly the legion is just the perfect mix of tankiness with lethal fighters. I can now safely say the dominator is rear end too--it can't hit poo poo with it's cannons and it's the same loving price as the champion which is superior in every way.

So definitely expand in a ring from the core worlds, last game and this game i've found amazing systems in the left top area in the first circle of unsurveyed systems. Generally the warning buoys are the hint that it's a good system but you can save some time by jumping in and seeing what types of planets are in there. I found my dream system from intel finding me a habitable planet.

Tomn
Aug 23, 2007

And the angel said unto him
"Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself."
But lo he could not. For the angel was hitting him with his own hands

Arghy posted:

I got that midline battle cruiser and it's rear end, such a weird setup and it's extremely fragile.

You mean the Conquest? It's a curious setup but it's my personal favorite ship in the game by a long mile. I'm not sure if objectively it's better or worse than any other capital, but it can absolutely be made to work, at least.

So the key thing about the Conquest is that it's one of the fastest and most maneuverable capitals in the game, and can mount a pretty good spread of long-range firepower on any given broadside which allows it to engage while also having the option to back out. It does not, however, have particularly strong shielding or armor. What this adds up to is that it does best as a hit and run force, circling the edges of an engagement, dashing in to deliver damage where needed before dashing out again before a serious response can be mustered. In particular it's quite good at popping smaller craft that don't have the flux necessary to stand up to its broadsides for long - it probably can't take on other capitals directly (not easily, certainly), but it doesn't need to if it keeps popping their escorts until your fleet can overwhelm their big scary battleships.

Gobblecoque
Sep 6, 2011

Arghy posted:

I can now safely say the dominator is rear end too--it can't hit poo poo with it's cannons

what

Atopian
Sep 23, 2014

I need a security perimeter with Venetian blinds.
Eagle XIV is about as slow as I care to go in anything that doesn't want to get hit.

As in, if you're in an Onslaught / Legion / Paragon, getting hit is 'good', in that you'd rather they waste their shots on you than the rest of the fleet, so your inability to avoid it is fine.

And in Eagles and anything faster, you can dodge, manoeuvre, whatever.

I dislike conquests because they're too unwieldy for the way you have to fly them.

Raine
Apr 30, 2013

ACCELERATIONIST SUPERDOOMER



on the flip side i never use legions and always scrap them. ive scrapped two derelict XIV legions today

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012


I got 2 hep assault cannons on it's fixed forward fire arc with 2 hyper velocity cannons on the medium mounts and it's constantly missing its shots, compared with the champion which has a much more versatile layout. It's PD layout is also terrible with very little range of motion for a lot of the mounts so they regularly hit max traversal without hitting the target even with the PD AI. You end up spending points for redundant turrets. I've had one in my fleet for a very long time now since i got lucky with salvage but i've literally repaired and sold off 3 of them now and the only reason i still have one is i keep forgetting it's there because it's so underwhelming haha. The fixed mounts really need a gimbal because i've seen it try to shoot both guns and only land shots with 1 of them because the other ship simply angled itself between the wide dispersion haha.

Tomn posted:

You mean the Conquest? It's a curious setup but it's my personal favorite ship in the game by a long mile. I'm not sure if objectively it's better or worse than any other capital, but it can absolutely be made to work, at least.

So the key thing about the Conquest is that it's one of the fastest and most maneuverable capitals in the game, and can mount a pretty good spread of long-range firepower on any given broadside which allows it to engage while also having the option to back out. It does not, however, have particularly strong shielding or armor. What this adds up to is that it does best as a hit and run force, circling the edges of an engagement, dashing in to deliver damage where needed before dashing out again before a serious response can be mustered. In particular it's quite good at popping smaller craft that don't have the flux necessary to stand up to its broadsides for long - it probably can't take on other capitals directly (not easily, certainly), but it doesn't need to if it keeps popping their escorts until your fleet can overwhelm their big scary battleships.

It's definitely got more damage potential than a lot of ships with 4 large turrets but by the time it's in a position to blaze away it usually doesn't have the flux to do so. I didn't like the onslaught much either though because of it's weird large turret setup and the dead zone. You'd think they would have learned from ocean going ships and learned that there's no point in having multiple turrets if you can't bring em all to bear on the same target haha.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

The dominator is primarily designed for fighting other cruisers and capitals, which it does well. It also benefits from focusing on range because as noted, it takes a while to aim, so extending your range increases the absolute distance of the arc your guns can trace, as does installing maneuvering thrusters and giving it a pilot with helmsmanship.

The conquest is a very marmite ship, some people like it but I personally don't find it to be worth it over, say, a dominator. If want a capital upgrade from that I want an onslaught. It is a quite effective mobile fire support ship and it does give you a lot of room for fancy piloting, but yes, it's inherently fragile and I don't find the situations where its speed can make the difference, actually come up very often, especially not when you consider that the onslaught (and the dominator) have burn drives which also make them far more mobile than they might seem. If the conquest has a selling point I would probably say it's the fixed forward large missile mounts, which you can fill with things like reaper batteries which gives you an unparalleled dick punch you can use quite often.

The onslaught is best used as a battering ram, it has very good armour and the burn drive should be used to drive it up forward in to the enemy formation so it can bring all its forward arc to bear on targets, you can also consider arming it with things like devastator flak cannons for area destructive firepower at a competitive flux cost, and put something kinetic or general purpose in your forward gun. It also has the TPCs which are extremely powerful, especially if you slap a magazine extension on it, they can overload and do heavy damage to most other capitals from long range if you charge a full extended mag barrage and fire it all off at once, which you can do after venting or as the opening salvo, then follow it up with a burn in and crush whatever you softened up with close range barrages from the large mounts and the secondary guns.

With the current build, I think I would suggest devastator flak on the wing turrets, a needler or hellbore in the center turret, a mix of HMGs and flak guns in the mediums, and vulcans/machineguns in the small mounts. Make sure the pilot has the PD range extension skill and ideally systems expertise to recharge your burn drive faster, plus helmsmanship, slap extended mags on it and maneuvering thrusters, ITU and heavy armour (use a build-in for the HA) and armored weapon mounts to reduce your dispersion and boost the armour up further. Take the armour skills too if you can.

Then just treat it as a machine that shits out fire in all directions, focus on employing the center mount intelligently and the TPCs, let the massive extended range PD array clear out all missiles and fighters in a massive radius, hammer ships down with the devastator flaks, don't be afraid to push right in with the burn drive as your PD net and armour will keep you safe from almost anything other than high caliber HE shells.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Jan 2, 2022

Larry Parrish
Jul 9, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Raine posted:

wait i just realized the way the ship is portrayed in combat is the same as the fleet/codex/mission/refit appearance as well. a gate top down might actually look real fuckin dumb there. poo poo.

it will have to be drastically altered to not look dumb as hell. maybe some rounded shielding on the back end \__________/ to kinda ensure the solar ejection can only go one way

then the big rear end thrusters and intricate engineering to fill it out. thinking about 3 pilot bays evenly spaced on both ends and the center (which will also be the bridge the ship is piloted from)

maybe like 30AP can be given with those 3 fighter bays as the only defense for the ship. that also allows a variant file with 3 undecided 10AP wings so the player colony can actually produce the ship

idk if you can give weapons an idle animation as opposed to a fire one, but you could rip off contact and have the gate-beam be some kind of engine cradle holding a fancy spinning gate and it slows down and locks forward when firing. this way it's both obvious that it's a mini-gate and yet it isn't magically firing sideways or something.

the other option, of course, is to just say the gate is inside the ship as a power source or something, because I'm not sure weapon animations even have frames, but I could be wrong.

Raine
Apr 30, 2013

ACCELERATIONIST SUPERDOOMER



Larry Parrish posted:

idk if you can give weapons an idle animation as opposed to a fire one, but you could rip off contact and have the gate-beam be some kind of engine cradle holding a fancy spinning gate and it slows down and locks forward when firing. this way it's both obvious that it's a mini-gate and yet it isn't magically firing sideways or something.

well if the ship was sideways there wouldn't have to be an idle animation, but yeah a ship that morphs when activated could be cool

Larry Parrish posted:

the other option, of course, is to just say the gate is inside the ship as a power source or something, because I'm not sure weapon animations even have frames, but I could be wrong.

lol what if the ship was based on the opposite idea, where the mini gate is inside a ship as you say but the partner mini gate is positioned on the edge of a black hole's event horizon or possibly in p-space

the ship system could have a similar cooldown but instead of firing a giant stream of death, it would dissipate all flux in the ship

probably easier to make as a mod as any sufficiently large ship (dreadnought i'm thinking) could be built around a mini gate

ultra-bonus: just a ship pack with different ships having cool uses revolving around the idea of two linked mini gates

btw anyone can feel free to steal any of these ideas for whatever mod. im sure someone has thought about this at least once anyways

edit: i have recklessly thrown this dumb idea into the discord. may we one day soon weaponize the janus device for warcrimes or profit

Raine fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Jan 2, 2022

Exodee
Mar 30, 2011

Damp and depressing.
It must be a goon in its
natural habitat!

Arghy posted:

I got 2 hep assault cannons on it's fixed forward fire arc with 2 hyper velocity cannons on the medium mounts and it's constantly missing its shots, compared with the champion which has a much more versatile layout. It's PD layout is also terrible with very little range of motion for a lot of the mounts so they regularly hit max traversal without hitting the target even with the PD AI. You end up spending points for redundant turrets. I've had one in my fleet for a very long time now since i got lucky with salvage but i've literally repaired and sold off 3 of them now and the only reason i still have one is i keep forgetting it's there because it's so underwhelming haha. The fixed mounts really need a gimbal because i've seen it try to shoot both guns and only land shots with 1 of them because the other ship simply angled itself between the wide dispersion haha.
Use a ballistic rangefinder to bring all those small ballistics turret mounts to 900 range so that you can put your kinetic damage dealers in them. The side ones seem to have bad arcs, but the AI tends to swivel around so they get a lot use regardless. That way you can put flak cannons or HMGs in the medium slots for overlapping PD fire.

I like to use dual light ACs for shield busting - they're incredibly efficient but suffer from a lot of recoil, which you can compensate for with armored weapon mounts. (which you want to have on the Dominator regardless)

You also seemed to have neglected mentioning the three medium missile mounts. Yes, those two large ballistics are flashy, but the missiles are the real workhorses of that ship imo. Put in three annihilator pods or proximity charge launchers and watch things in front of it melt in a barrage of flux-free high explosive ordnance.

Lastly, parodoxially I find hellbores to be a lot more effective than Hephaestuses on the Dominator. Hephs require a lot of time-on-target for them to do their work, which doesn't jive well with the Dominator's sluggish turn rate. Meanwhile the hellbore is fire and forget and even one hit hurts like hell - plus the AI seems uncannily accurate with them.

Bold Robot
Jan 6, 2009

Be brave.



How many of the high value bounties are supposed to spawn if you are running Vayra’s? I did two but after a few in-game months, a new one hasn’t appeared.

Dandywalken
Feb 11, 2014

ugh Legion is so meh.

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

Dandywalken posted:

ugh Legion is so meh.

Blasphemy my legions have pulled fights out of their rear end so many times haha. The key is you can't do anything but squall MLRS with an officer with missile spec because that's their primary kinetic dealer, LMG's for all the smalls except for the 4 frontal arcs which need more kinetic weapons, 2 flaks on the rear mount with a dual flak on the frontal medium and 2 assault chain guns on the remaining 2 medium frontal arcs. Even with all of this it's primary weapon is a least 2 bombers with spark fighters to keep pilot deaths low--i go trident and dagger for 8 torpedoes on a target. I might swap out the chain guns for a meatier explosive mount since it can do more with less shots and will have more range, same with the rail guns up front which sounded great but i might just go to dual auto cannons to save some points.


At this point the only capital the dominator has gone up against has been the remnant battleship and it lasted a few seconds in that fight haha. It didn't do too amazing against the remnant cruisers either but maybe it's because i have the wrong weapons on it.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

I mean nothing is going to do "well" against a radiant, they're extremely dangerous and capable of taking a paragon 1 on 1 quite easily.

If you are specifically fighting redacteds you do want to spec for the fight, I would probably suggest they don't actually do very well with the aggressive playstyle because they are very mobile and generally come in large numbers, so if you advance they just fall back and envelope you very easily, also their guns are generally energy based and they probably have the officer skill that makes that better at close range and under pressure.

I would probably say the best use for a dominator against that would be gauss cannons, just to contribute long range fire support and the gauss cannon is also plenty capable of damaging the hull of remnant ships, but you will be pushing the the flux capacity of the ship with that. Other option would be autocannons and a mauler or two for HE support. You could try storm needlers but that again is straining the flux capability and you don't want them at close range if you can avoid it.

Bear in mind also that the dominator is only a cruiser, it's a very big cruiser that drives much like a capital, but it is cruiser hulled and cruiser flux statted, and also cruiser DP costed, so it can't ever contribute as much as a proper capital can.

Gobblecoque
Sep 6, 2011
I don't use the legion a whole lot but I've found since the update 2x hammer barrages and 4x thumpers is quite strong. Let fighters and other ships crack shields, scrap the armor with the hammers, and then melt hull with the thumpers.

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Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

I fought the radiant before with 2 14th legions and a 14th onslaught and they were never really an issue but that's because i had fighter superiority. The radiant does really badly against fighter swarms so if you got some beefcake capitals designed to take a beating to hold it's attention and keep it's shield down your bombers will tear it apart. I need to start exploring again once i get my colonies up and running because i've had terrible luck on finding good ships and blue prints this run. On the flip side i now have 4 lv7 officers haha so got lucky in that regard but now i'm facing a quandry because do i still get that skill to increase my officers levels encase i don't find 4 more lv7's or do i not take it and accept some lv5 officers banking on finding more lv7's.

I'm tempted to keep some extra apogee cruisers in my fleet just because they're great support cruisers and i could swap them out depending on the fight though my survey is maxed out so i kinda need more sensor strength rather than survey.

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