Fractal Softworks Forum

All I can see is the faces of the crew from those 3 Colossi as they're being awarded combat deployment medals afterwards.

Edit: wait they didn't make it out RIP :<

>Hey lads, you're technically a cruiser, right? Lot of cargo space for EWAR gear yeah?
>Sir this is a civilian cargo vessel carrying suppli-
>New orders from command! Equipment's being transferred as we speak!

Obviously fake, Hephaestus are terrible after all

But no, this is really cool build - going shield tank over using more PD is interesting. I see several times when it really bites you, but also when it is a good call. It certainly helps endurance.

I do think the prevalence of dlacs over any other gun points to them being a bit overtuned in the current patch, but thats ok.

I'm addicted to s mod expanded magazines on onslaughts to boost their main guns. I think it really helps vs Radiants, as they are very efficient and you demonstrate that often there are multiple onslaughts firing their TPCs on a single Radiant where other guns don't reach. During that whole long chase at the end where the onslaughts are just whittling down hull, +50% DPS + burst advantage on the TPCs is nice.

Obviously fake, Hephaestus are terrible after all

I mean looking at the stats they didn't even do that amazingly, and it has 3 of them. Obviously perfect for this build as with the sheer power of LDACs you just want to kill things fast disregarding flux costs and hit strength. Doesn't mean now that the weapon is good, it got carried by everything else in this build. Hell even the Thumpers are here.

downsizing mediums now hmm..
time for medium ballistic integration?

Yeah it's all formation with this one. The ship doesn't work without it*. That said with armor tanking builds I could get to the Radiants but never beat them for reasons mentioned above, so I think it needs a build in this vein although swaps of weapons for example can probably be done. I never could get far with 1x Hephag 2x Devastator though either, which I initially thought would be stronger. That one basically can't finish Apexes off in a timely way, if it even makes it that far because beam Glimmer swarms are another terror that will legit just eat Onslaughts if something like 7 beam Glimmers can build up, if you are not very aggressive with your guns. That's why I ended up thinking 3x big DPS gun is best and I can't afford Mjolnir so.

Anyway to be able to use the formation without Retreat orders I think BBE said there's a setting that removes the thing that you can't place waypoints closer than a certain distance from the edge, when I mentioned these maneuvers in another thread IIRC. That would be much more sane to just change settings because you are your own worst enemy with this strategy: forget to cancel a retreat and you lose a ship. And by extension the fight because there is no retreating for all the ships from this one, not with this build. However, I don't want to do it because I want to keep as close to vanilla as possible.

*Edit: not to a 6 Ordo standard I mean. Vs a lesser multi-Ordo these can of course just defend a point.

Maybe they are better this version, but I don't see much value in devastators for the onslaught side mounts. I should give them a fair shake again because I know they were changed, but my ingrained perception is that they are not very effective. If I'm attacking an onslaught with other ships I certainly prefer to see a devastator rather than any other large ballistic.

[Edit] Good point on the arbalests! I should also try those more, that 200 shot size is really not bad.

Maybe they are better this version, but I don't see much value in devastators for the onslaught side mounts. I should give them a fair shake again because I know they were changed, but my ingrained perception is that they are not very effective. If I'm attacking an onslaught with other ships I certainly prefer to see a devastator rather than any other large ballistic.

Yeah I think I put Devastators on the sides since I saw other people doing it, but realistically, in my case I have PCLs for PD anyway. Also, they'll fire at ships from max range even though very few shots will actually make it there, so in many cases they were basically just draining my flux. (I'm not sure how the random range they explode at is determined.) So when I started looking for ways to increase my damage output, replacing them became an obvious path forward.

I'm not that excited about Arbalest here, since you would be paying 8 OP for 167 DPS with a range of 1.8*700+100=1360, vs 5 OP for 143 DPS with a range of 1.8*600+200 for 1280. In either case you will outrange Remnant energy weapons even on their capitals when ECM bonus is in effect (1.8*700*.9=1134).

Actually, since Ballistic Rangefinder affects base range, both of them have identical range on the Onslaught, i.e. 800 base range * 1.85 (ITU, GI, BM) = 1480 su. But I'm looking more at the anti-hull damage for the hit strength (which doesn't matter vs shields), since to kill a ship you need a combination of anti-shield DPS, anti-armor DPS, and anti-hull DPS. In this case the Arbalest would likely have more than double the damage to hull compared with the LDAC. Higher anti-hull DPS not only means killing the enemy ship faster, but also means less chance of the ship getting away to heal up, so it's also a pretty important stat to look at for weapons. I tend to use the HVD for this reason; despite it being about half the DPS of the Heavy Needler "on paper" it actually beats the Heavy Needler against hull, and is around 90% of the DPS of the HAC against hull (and, more flux-efficient than either against hull). So it's actually a pretty decent all-around weapon.

I would think it's more a matter of whether or not the Arbalest fits within your OP or flux budget, etc. compared with LDACs.