Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector AI at its finest

Nice! Looking forward to see how far you can push it 

If you don't mind Monitor cheese then one highly capable flagship - needs to be able to take down a Radiant 1v1 and a mass of lesser Remnants, so probably a capital or a very strong cruiser at least, I honestly don't know if a Doom without Omega weapons can under player control - plus a few Monitors might be the recipe under player control. They are more efficient distraction than fighters per DP. Edit: you might even want to put Monitors on Full Assault if using no other ships.

I'd like a rules clarification here btw: if you deploy unarmed civilian ships to the backline to leverage fleet skills and they don't participate in combat, do they count for DP?

First off, amazing work. 

It's a real tour de force of Starsector knowledge application and use of everything the game makes available to you.

Monitor tanking and kiting with the SO speed boost.  To be honest, I think the double flux dissipation isn't as important as the +50 base speed and +50 zero flux boost making it faster than enemy frigates and destroyers.  At base 90 speed, it will get surrounded and it will go down eventually against that much incoming fire.   I note your Monitor officers took Helmsmanship instead of Ordinance Expertise, for example.

Use of the highest sustained missile choice for flux free damage combined with the use of flux free damage soaking (fighters with Carrier Group, all with relatively short respawn times, and the Broadswords are solid HP soaked per second).  Claws to add Ion damage to the mix and reduce return fire.

Respecing away from officer training and cybernetic augmentation to turn your level 6, 4 elite skill officers into Mercenaries so they only cost story points instead of skill points.

Use of an operations center Kite (with bonus ECM hullmod plus Coordinated Manuevers bonus when the Monitors start dropping) to ensure you've got that +250% command point generation to ensure you have enough command points for kiting with the Monitors. 

Derelict Operations with hand picked D-mods being the largest single DP boost in the game.

And the amount of practice and trial and error in actually learning how to get the AI to dance to your tune.

Overall, a beautiful build.

I'd like a rules clarification here btw: if you deploy unarmed civilian ships to the backline to leverage fleet skills and they don't participate in combat, do they count for DP?

If they're providing a bonus, they clearly are participating in combat, no?  If I use an unarmed escort Afflictor, and it's only providing a +50% damage bonus from its ship system, would you count that for DP for a flagship centric fight?  I'd argue speed and command points are even more important than a damage bonus in a fight like this, as they keep ships alive.  So if you can't do the fight without them, then they clearly should be counted.  However, even 70 DP (or 69 if you put a bunch of D-mods on the kite) is still amazing work with AI ships, so I'm not sure what you're concerned about.  You did have a pile of command points at the end, so it is unclear to me you need the +250% bonus, but maybe?   Anyways, I wouldn't bother to redo this fight, as you've clearly demonstrated its effectiveness.

As for commentary about human piloting, lowest DP I've gotten in 0.96 involves using a Neural Link Radiant.  I just grabbing a pre-existing save real quick, and doing a fight with a Radiant and Afflictor, the attached screen shot is what I can do in a single attempt, along with what my build was (i.e. what I was using in that save with an actual fleet).  Messed up at one point and overloaded in the fight, hence the 50% hull from Elite Combat Endurance - although 1500 armor and 20,000 hull let me survive, and phase skim away to vent.

I suppose I could go grab an Afflictor (P) or I may be able to get away with a Kite as neural link fodder, given the Afflictor retreated after it started ticking down in CR.  Half the fight the Afflictor was retreated anyways.  In any case, 69 DP under AI control is amazing as far as I'm concerned.

If I were to try to optimize it, I'd obvious switch around the Cybernetic Augmentation and Coordinated Maneuvers as they weren't actually helping much.  Probably grab Elite Helmsmanship instead of Coordinated Maneuvers.  With tweaking, I might be able to do without Omega weapons - certainly need some source of longer range ion damage.  Maybe converted hanger for some claws or Xyphos.  Alternatively, might go for 5x Autopulse + Expanded Magazines + 4x Reaper + Afflictor (P) to just crush a ship, back off, repeat.

As for commentary about human piloting, lowest DP I've gotten in 0.96 involves using a Neural Link Radiant.  I just grabbing a pre-existing save real quick, and doing a fight with a Radiant and Afflictor, the attached screen shot is what I can do in a single attempt, along with what my build was (i.e. what I was using in that save with an actual fleet).

I never want to hear again about how Leadership tree is overpowered.

Thank you for the appreciation and also for the writeup I agree with just about everything, except one thing is that I think flux stats are extremely important on the Monitor. For example, I wanted to outfit it with an Ion Cannon or alternatively a Shock Repeater, but the change in flux balance was enough to make it die when swarmed. I don't have Ordnance Expertise on it mainly for the reason that it is worth half of a vent due to the low amount of OP spent on that ship, so Helmsmanship seems more impactful for that reason.

Oh good point, looking at it, I forgot the Flak Cannons don't count, but even in that case is would only amount to about a 1% flux dissipation change.  9 speed is roughly a 4% speed change.

That Radiant build is very neat. How do you use the Neural Integrator though, if it's for the Radiant and not the Afflictor? Do you swap in and out of the Radiant to get Phase Skimmer charges?

I simply can't directly control the Radiant without it.  So I swap into it initially, and then never leave.  It goes something like: 

1) Transfer to Radiant with T key. 
2) Order Afflictor to escort Radiant.  This keeps frigates that try to flank busy for a moment, until I've got 2 skimmer charges, one to turn around towards it, blow it up, and then turn around again to face the rest of the fleet.
3) If I need a ship hit with Entropy Amplifier, I simply target it with R, and the Afflictor (which apparently is coded to target what I target when on escort) will immediately use its ship system on the new target (if off cooldown).  I then un-target the ship to keep the Afflictor from using it again until I need it.
4) Retreat the Afflictor once PPT runs out for it (don't actually let the CR tick down for it - those are supplies I could be saving!).
5) Fight at the bottom or side edge a lot at that point.

Retreating with this particular Radiant build is very easy, simply time a Reality Disruptor shot, drop a PCL or two, and skim away (this is one of the reasons the PCL damage is low compared to everything else, also saving it for enemy fighter wings).  Those will cause the AI to either back off, or get their engines disabled as they try to run through the Reality Disruptor to get to me, giving me plenty of time to vent.  But it does mean I backpedal a lot, running into the back edge.  However, this then triggers the AI backoff logic (since Alex hasn't made the battle space infinite), and then it comes down to darting out, destroying something, and backing off to safety again.  Amusingly, the PPT doesn't tick down when things are backed off, or if I'm only engaging anything up to a single Cruiser, which is what made it possible to defeat the entire double Ordo in a single deployment with PPT left over.  I had expected to need to retreat mid-fight to be honest.

Sadly, controlling a Radiant directly is about the only good use I've found for Neural Link, where I feel like I'm getting something more out of the build than other skill selections would provide.  Although, it is a testament to the power of a highly mobile battleship in player hands that even with the 50 OP penalty, it can still do something like this.

I'd like to see a video of this one.

It is not that exciting to watch, given I'm running at normal speed (and I'd die at double speed due to reflexes - as it was I made a fairly costly mistake in this fight), and it is a lot of kiting, but I suppose I could try.  What recording software do people recommend?  I've never uploaded a video to Youtube.

I guess the level to beat would be 62 DP then! Going down to 55 if SCC pulls his build off.

Well, I haven't proven I can do 62.  A Kite is much different than then say, the 66 DP version (Pirate Afflictor which will functionally be doing the same thing as the Afflictor, mostly just 1 less weapon due to fewer OP), as it will take longer, and I might need to retreat half way through and then re-engage.

Fair enough. It could be argued that being able to deploy a ton of civvie ships (ie. your cargo and fuel haulers) for +Nav and +ECM just from the fleet skills is an advantage to the fleet command playstyle, but it's also cleaner to not do so.

I guess I'm viewing the challenge from how the game rewards the player and provides motivation.

The game itself, from the very first fight onwards, teaches the player to fight fleets with minimal investment, to save on supplies (and in the long run, credits).  That is the reason it makes sense for me to say the DP reduction from Derelict Operations is a valid usage.  We both know that 5 hand picked D-mods does not reduce the effectiveness of Legions down to 28 DP.  But I'm viewing it from the perspective of supplies used during the fight.  Those Legions really only cost you 28 supplies per deployment (although both your Legion/Monitor and my Radiant repair costs will raise the final costs admittedly, but that is way more complicated than I want to go into).   If you've got the supplies to deploy civvie ships, you could have just used those supplies to deploy combat ships instead.

Other metrics for smaller fleets outside the game would be even more arbitrary.  I could have just as easily said, do 2 Ships, 2 Ordos instead of 5 Ships, 5 Ordos.  However, the issue with that one for the AI is that it will get surrounded.  Although there may be a pristine double Paragon build that lives in one corner that could do that one (and no, that is not a formal challenge. ). But from a game perspective, there is in fact a number representing your total net worth before the fight and a number representing your total networth after the fight, that is an actual in game metric.  Now it might effectively be meaningless to the player by this point since the rewards so outpace the costs and it becomes a rounding error, but the game still keeps track.

Although, the real reason for the challenge is that it forces one to pull out every single strong, overpowered, or "cheesy" trick in the book.  Which I'm pretty sure is interesting information for Alex.

I was not in fact concerned about the legitimacy of this run but more thinking about next steps. I think this Legion build can be stripped down to 2 Monitors - 65 DP including the Kite (I will definitely need the +CP regen at least if the Monitors go) or possibly 1 Monitor - 61 DP with optimal play. However, if civvie ships didn't count, I was thinking maybe it could be done with 2x Onslaught if they have max ECM and +Nav from auxiliaries (56 DP).

Well, given a 5 d-mod kite costs a single DP, 3 kites will hit maximum Coordinated Manuevers (3x6% + 2x1% = 20%), and +12% ECM from elite Gunnery Implants, so 59 DP.  To be honest, you'd have to really spam Mecenaries to get ECM superiority over a double Ordo from the beginning.

I have some more optimal lines for bringing the DP count lower already in mind though. Basically this should work if you replace the Legion with anything that can take on a Radiant and swarms of lesser Remnant ships. In particular the Prometheus Mk. II is also capable of a very similar build, which can also 1v1 a sim Assault Radiant even fully D-modded:

I will laugh so hard if the most efficient build against Radiants ends up being a Luddic ship.

It technically is 2 Ordos, but I just started a new save and tried to fight anything with the name "ordo" in it. It doesn't have quite as many cruisers as you had. Successful run starts at 31 minutes. That said, it was very close nevertheless, and without omega weapons more serious than 2 autopulsers, or with a better ship, 365 DP is about as much as I can do.

Nice one! I'm going to put that in the OP and any other very low DP videos that may emerge as well.

We haven't defined "double Ordo" for this challenge, other than Hiruma Kai's definition of ~640 DP. I'm not going to count. I believe that'll be the lowest DP to clear it at 55.

I counted it (I always forget to install the results mod, since I usually don't play with it) and I think the issue is that I haven't played in a while, so I just started a new save and cheated myself everything I need. I also need to get some cheerleaders to make as many ordos attack me simultaneously as possible, as with just the ships I need they don't feel the need to gang up on me.