Great tutorial ! The moment you mentioned cost efectiveness i was like " god bless this man !". Because from my experience reddit and most other channels either have no clue what they're doing OR are in the stage of the game when credits just doesnt matter anymore and "raptor full of torp chimeras " (with mk4 engines ofc) is the suggestion for a good fleet... Its nice to see someone aproaching the topic from basics.
To paraphrase a redditer’s rule of thumb: Fighters squadrons beat destroyers. Destroyers beat stations. Stations beat fighter squadrons And I add that it’s good to have a mixture of at least two of those to take a battleship. I think that’s a great starting point for a beginner in the early game for planning purposes.
The main problem of X4 is fleet composition. Can you build a viable fleet of 100% S ships? Yes. 100% large ships? Yes. A mix between them? Also yes. This could be fixed with MORE ship specialization. VRO mod tries to do that, but it's just a rebalance mod, making bigger ships more durable. It doesn't really add new mechanics.
You can see it as a problem or an opportunity. Personally, I think having numerous "viable" fleet compositions is a good fit for a sandbox-style game like X4.
@@Rinshun_ No one ever accused Egosoft games of being balanced. I already made a video on that topic (#3 in this series). Still, "everything works" isn't accurate. There are huge quantitative differences in the performance of different fleet compositions for different applications. I'm just wrapping up some in-depth research on that topic and will release the video soon, so stay tuned!
@@CptSnuggles07 IMO lots of people get balance mistaken for what should be "niches". It isn't that the Gunship class is unbalanced against Corvettes, but that it doesn't (at least any more) have a niche for it that IT fills better than either the Frigate or Corvette), and it isn't that the Nova is unbalanced against Perseus but that the Nova lacks a niche to fit in, so compared to the Perseus it is woefully slow but not fast enough turning to make the difference. Things should have a niche, a unique value proposition that that ship can best fill. Hence for the Argon I suggest fitting a "free" (because no model change is needed) missile launcher, at least for most of their ships. The Discovery has the niche of the hybrid fighter-scout, it IS a lot slower than the paranid scout, but it has two weapons so it might be slower, but it makes, for the "main three races" a good interceptor, because it is fairly fast and fairly well armed. IT has a niche. The Kestrel and Gannet are both smuggling ships, and so have a niche (they also, because they have capacity, a niche as pirate ships), so the scout class is generally "balanced", not by actual stats, but by having actual niches, even if the AI and order lists available don't enable that, they potentially could. Not so much the base fighter class. Or Gunships. And the Carriers mostly got badly nerfed. The ZeusE was hit hard, bigger but carrying a LOT less, but rather than undo that nerfing, or pointing out it was twice as fast as the Collosus, so carrying half the ships was fine, they nerfed the other two race carriers for the base game races. The Raptor still gets 120 docks. So IT didn't get nerfed, but the others did. I would up the small ship capacity of the ZeusE, even if that means dropping a couple of M class docks, just so it can still operate AS A CARRIER, just not needed for most ships, because the Paranid as a whole have decently fast ships, so don't need a carrier, except for the Theseus and Ares. I'd then put more docks in the Collosus and more drones with the Phoenix, not really as balance, but that they occupy different niches: Niche 1) Player Ship/Support Carrier. The Zeus E can do it, the speed is more important than the dock count. See also the Boron carrier. Niche 2) Attack By Rush. The Collosus can do that, given the Nova is pretty darn cheap if fitted out cheaply, so the losses will be high, but they will be cheap, and so fitting, say, 48 small ships out cheaply will beat 28 ships fitted expensively (just lose against 120 ships) Niche 3) Bullet Sponge. The Condor can do that, while its slow fighters chip away at shields, and plentiful drones keep the shields from regenerating, but it can't chase down a target that nopes out of the battle. Niche 4) Power Fantasy. The Raptor. Lots of guns and lots of fighters launched, but all of them REALLY expensive. It's a lot, and if someone masses 5 Collossi against you, you will lose, but 1 on 1 you will win so easily you will minimise losses by roflstomping your opponent. Niches. Balance would mean that the ZeusE is the same as the ColossusE the same as the CondorE, just with different skins. Balance means they operate differently, and failure means you operated them badly, not that it was nerfed or weak. The Destroyers generally did fine with the nerfing, but since the old ones were still carriers, still able to take 40 small ships, someone will miss the older versions and complain bitterly if they were removed from play. Make them carry more drones instead of 40 fighters, and you might find that almost nobody, or actually nobody, misses the old sentinel/vanguard destroyers because you couldn't really use those 40 docks, but an extra 20 drones that COULD be used were golden. Same for the Support ship class. Sure, it didn't need 50 docks, only enough to rearm/resupply the fleet it was attached to, but it needed enough cargo space to DO that task, and the Aux ships fail at that utterly. If they held more, you'd use them as traders, if they pre-made the stuff, so it didn't cut into their meager hold space, some may just eschew the rest of the fleet, just go ham with missile spam turrets and 2-5,000 missiles and 500 lasertowers. But IMO if that is a problem, MAKE it not a problem, but it may well not be a problem anyway: the Aux can't have a lot of turrets, and its shields are poor, so it makes a bad fleet arm. If needed, just cut the number of turrets it can have, or only allow gun turrets, not missile turrets, and forbid it from having any way of deploying stuff, and if the "cost" of that is the price for an Aux that can rearm a complete fleet, then just about everyone will say "YEAH!". IMO if Aux pre-made missiles, drones, flares, etc, and it was from that pool it rearmed (with the same loadout you initially set the ship), and only if a specific arm order came in that asked for something not pre-made would it go to the cargo hold to create, otherwise the cargo hold was used to just top up the current loadout, then people would use the Aux class. As it is, they are just used as cheap carriers before you can afford actual carriers, hence reducing their docking space, doubly so now they also cut the carrier capacity to carry ships.
Fighters against a station loses to the hoards of beam turrets the Xenon stations have. And ANY M class can't last against graviton fire, it can't outrange them, and so it dies quickly. IMO the fleet was someone trolling, that is how bad it was. That fleet setup would work, if layered, on pure interception, but no corvette et al should EVER be in range of ANY graviton gun. Heck, even plasma turrets are dangerous, but graviton hits a LOT harder.
@@markhackett2302 I don't think they were trolling, I think they just wanted to talk about their quirky off-meta fleet idea, regardless of whether it was actually a good fit for the topic being discussed. It can indeed be a decent fleet for light to medium anti-ship duty. The video's closing footage shows it against a K battle group, against which it did just fine, aside from the couple of Ospreys that happened to waddle into graviton range.
@@CptSnuggles07 Well I did say the composition could well work on pure interception, so therefore only small and medium targets, but against a station, I still feel it is more likely they were trolling, IF THEY POSITED IT AS VALID FOR STATION ATTACK. Now, it could well be that they'd assumed it would be good on stations because they'd used it against fighters, and turrets don't move, so it should be easier, right? But if they said they'd used it against stations, especially Xenon stations (because of how many guns they can have), they were either poorly equipped 'twixt the ears or trolling you. It does show how scenarios can change things, and one thing that the Xenon will do (and knowing this you, the player, CAN exploit it) is chase you down if you DARE attack a station. The NPC races are a LOT more lackadaisical on this point, but you can be happily taking out a station and then a couple of Ks anvil you against the station, and the AI will get shot by the station or the K or both trying to fly somewhere to retaliate. Or your destroyer can get just a bit too close and trigger 34,000 (it feels) defence drones that take you out by dogpiling and you can neither use your destroyers (because they are not able to hit) but also not able to use a mass of fighters (because they will then chase the drones to near the station, where the station will use its beam guns to take you out). It also is why I advise at least SOME beams on capitals, just to keep the shields of small fighters from recharging, but also they are the best to hit a drone attacker. The final bit is make "defend ship" either keep that defender a LOT closer, or to introduce a new "close defence" order so that you can surround your destroyers with some gunships on "Defend Destroyer" that stick REALLY close to the destroyer ship it is defending but equipped with beam turrets and pulse main weapons, a well balanced defensive arm that for the Paranid/Split can only be replaced with either the larger and more expensive Frigates or the less turreted Corvette (so you may well field them with mostly beam mains and therefore light tracking missile turrets). The Corvette is a much more aggressive ship, but you can fit it out to do well as a defence item, but a gunship, having more turrets that therefore do not require the base platform to nose onto target, makes a better defence ship, just a less useful direct attacker itself. The Minotaur is poor for that, but if you build it up as a throwaway item with cheap stuff, then I suppose it has a point to the fleet, but the AI don't DO things that way, it still wants to fit Mk2 stuff all over the minotaur, negating its only advantage, its cheap hull, but losing badly because it can't benefit from good engines because it is so slow and having only two shield slots it can't benefit from those expensive shields. This is why IMO the Colosus needs to have 50 ish small fighters, in the E designation, because the AI will house cheap Novas with low settings and just Zerg rush, and those 10 Mediums (or 12...) packed with cheap low setting Minotaurs, making up with low quality ships by using lots of them. The player will then put all Chimera or Ares or Eclipse with Mk4 Split Combat engines etc, because they have them free from their own shipyard, so it will be "OP" but it mixes Paranid and Split with the Argon carrier for "best of breed" hybrids. That isn't an option for the NPC races. If the player wants so many ships, they'd pick a Raptor and fit twice as many on board, so being able to cheese it is not a factor. If the Colossus went 48/12 the Zeus went 24/6 and Condor 40/10 internal docks, the Condor getting 10-15 more drones, the Zeus was the fastest, the Colossus the slowest (of the three), then each have a niche, and the Zeus is twice as fast as the slowest, but carries (slightly more than) half the number of ships, it has a use, the fast carrier of a PC. The Condor just GETS to a conflict and ITS fighters are used to attack near the carrier (or the Teladi station being attacked) while those drones are used to distract small craft and tie up turrets so their slow but well shielded standard ships take out the targets. And the Colossus zerg rushes, trying to overwhelm 5 on 1 while the M class ships are close pickets to the carrier or support ships for Ps or Bs to be taken out quickly because those are the two that are the biggest threat to the low class fighters fielded. Of course it calls for the AI to be better, not only for pathing, but also in what it asks for to be made. Not "one carrier and five corvettes", a carrier that is waiting for 30-40 fighters to be aboard, not 4-5 because that is all that can be ordered in a mission. I think this is why the carriers got so nerfed: instead of making better missions for a FULL carrier (or fighters to be sent then via AI ownership TO a carrier waiting), they just cut the complement of a carrier instead. So rather than ask for 30 ships, cut carriers to only hold 20, and then asking for 8 doesn't seem quite as silly. Le sigh.
"Carriers try to stay at range" Me, watching my Tokyo charge a Xenon station and die: "They do?" Yes, I know, it's AI issues and me not micro-managing every aspect of the fight myself, but I gotta try to laugh at my own expense otherwise it gets depressing to watch ships die needlessly.
Most of time it's turret orders. Never use attack all enemies, because only L plasma out range Xenon turrets. If a turret can target something, the AI will try to get close enough to use it.
Theoretically, carriers shouldn't do that if they have any S/M subordinates capable of attacking the station. If all their subordinates are dead, or set to "docked", or set to an assignment other than Attack, they'll absolutely just charge into the station's guns. Coordinate Attack also makes them do that sometimes, if the fleet commander wisely determines that the staging point should be on the exact opposite side of the station.
@@CptSnuggles07don't they also have an extra layer associated with attack orders in the behaviors? because I could tell, in the menu/info screen, a ship to only disable it's targets, or something else but I haven't explored more into that area
@@franciscowillam2411 Unfortunately "doing something wrong" is quite easy and since the game won't tell you, hard to spot and correct. That is why I feel "niche" is a better thing to strive for, because that niche will inform how NOT to do something wrong. Indeed I think that the reason why torpedoes are considered OP is because they state a niche quite clearly: fire at range then run while the reload happens. Guns not so much. A pity why Gunships are no longer bombers is because they now can carry much fewer missiles. Not a problem for the Peregrine, because it is fast enough to do hit and run, but the Minotaur, not so much, and it isn't even well defended to boot. Terrible. But if the Minotaur, alone out of the gunships, carried a lot more missiles, maybe it just has ALL turrets set to tracking missiles and leaves the big main guns for M class take out antics. The Frigates ought to have at least SOME of the turrets as tracker missile turrets, because as a bullet sponge that will let them last longer against a swarm of fighters. The Minotaur should have enough that it can fit all four turrets as tracker launchers, and use the missile spam as disruption, sitting in the middle of the cloud, or pacing whatever ship it is defending, using main guns only if missiles run out or there happens to be a use for them because the enemy decided "I'll just rush straight at them". That would give it a niche that the peregrine can't as easily fill.
You guys might be wondering what the best weapon is for your player S and M ships. It's MK2 Beam weapons with Slashers. Roll for 90% reload. Do NOT take my word for it, do it yourself. Get a Yasur or something with 4 hard points, put all MK2 Beams with Slashers. Better yet get a Chimera or Dragon, witness yourself become king of dog fighting. I've stripped down Ks with this set up, not nearly as fast as Burst Rays and you can't strip the larger shields but still you can strip everything else.
You can also try a Kuraokami with 4x beam (slasher) & 1x thermal disintegrator (Slasher, Slayer, or annihilator) for a more "Jack of all Trades" loadout
@@lemonoeye I used 6 beams on a Pulsar. The damage is poor, but with 6 on tap, as long as the engagement has gaps between targets long enough to cool them off, then 6 beams does as much damage as 2 actual weapons, but hits far FAR more reliably In System. Mk2 Burst Rays are, IMO too niche, they are FAR too good at taking out subsystems to not get (for the price) but then so terribly pants at any actual damage. The Mk2 should upgrade the Mk1 not by being even more powerful against subsystems, but being better balanced, so up the base damage but nerf the multiplier against subsystems. Mk1 Beams would be niche and upgrading to Mk2 would make them more general purpose, but still "oh you want to use this against subsystems too". Radar range is a poor choice, because even 20% extra range is not worth it, even for pure scouts or a carrier, 50% it needs to be or you'd just take the drag mod instead. Same for travel time et al, they don't boost enough the relevant stats so you really want to take the polisher mod anyway where it increases top speed, travel speed, and so on, several things at a time, rather than merely one, so I'd make the drag mod, if it goes up to 20%, a 50% mod too. Pirates also don't seem to take much notice you hid all the stuff and made it scan like biowaste instead, the police are "fooled", but pirates say "load up some poop for me, then, looks like I will sell THAT on the pirate market!!!!", the mod HAS TO stop pirates, otherwise only smugglers would bother, since only smugglers care if the police scan them.
Wether you buy a generic 15kk or 30kk destroyer, an average fighter wing of equal value will kill it most if not all of the time. If you specialise both to counter each other - fighters would still come out on top even stronger. Fighters do suffer from casual atrition more though. And destroyers are the main anti-station platform ingame.
still not sure how to solve the sector-patrol problem (without using the reaction force mod) though. seeing how intercept command works, I guess Guppy (on patrol command) with light fighters (on intercept command), with multiple other guppy sub-fleets mimicing the commander, should be the final solution (or having multiple guppy groups use protect-position to cover entire travel paths?). But I'm still a long way away from being able to print guppies :( In the mean time I'm trying to use groups of [patrol katana + a few mimic katanas], but their behavior looks like "each katana picks a random friendly ship to escort", which in no way is providing the area-coverage that I need. Technically I could try assign a couple interceptors to each katana, but that depends on whether the interceptors would also call the katana into action ... :/ (otherwise I expect the couple fighters would just die to khaak / pirates)
The Patrol and Police default behaviors are just hot garbage. I prefer using repeat orders, just a series of area attacks. If you're willing to dedicate a carrier to the cause, you can use Position Defense instead, spreading out your fighter groups and setting them to assist one another in combat. If you *really* want to use the Patrol behavior, Sapporo + interceptors + auxiliary is probably the best composition for S/M targets. Sapporo has double radar range, which means double interceptor range, and the aux ship can repair damaged interceptors in lieu of a carrier. That's assuming you have access to the Sapporo, though, which is easier said than done.
Sector patrols might be better now, if a call is now acted on, but that can still be missed, if a destroyer decides to pirate your trader, it might go boom before even you get a message on the tickertape. But that didn't happen at all, so all a patrol would do is nothing until a Red Enemy came into radar range. That was bad. That also was the only actual niche for Frigates, too, or gunboats (if you were cheap or silly), as bullet sponges while the small fighters with it demolished its attackers. There's some fix for that, but it often doesn't appear to work, so can't tell if it is just confirmation bias or what. The sector patrol should go to anyone YOUR stuff, including your satellites, spot as an enemy (or, for traders "attacked by pirates", BEFORE that enemy status because it sent a threat to the trader), even if it is 100km away out of radar range, and speed matters only in getting there before your asset dies.
My problem is never with composition its my damn AI pilots not withdrawing from combat when I give the order, and going kamikaze with a K while I'm sending in plasma with my destroyer at range. I love this game been playing it for 20 plus years but still they can't get the AI right, granted its not always retarded and it does have its shining moments, but its random at best. As far as AI has come in this day and age it would be a wet space dream if they could implement it in X, that and allow for at least a 40 man co op server.
Plasma Guns are incredible accurate. Try shooting mines or Laserturrets with Boltguns or Pulse, then repeat with Plasmaguns. "Light" Waepons miss 90% of it's shoots while Plasma hits those small targets with 90% (roughly) of it's shoots.
Yes, they are accurate, but they are really slow, making it real hard to hit anything in a dogfight with them. plus the horribly bad heat efficiency. Laser towers and mines are tiny targets, so yeh, the spread on the pulse laser does miss a lot. Its more of a special case. Your plasma fighters wont win against other fighters. Extremely low hit rate with extremely low sustained dps does not work well here.
I've noticed the same thing with the Boron small weapons - the short range low rate of fire cannon is so much more reliable at hitting mines that it's not even funny. This might be a trait of heavy weapons in general - they get damage and accuracy against stationary targets, at the cost of either range or projectile speed. Because having all of that would let them bully fast fighters, a thing they're not made to do.
Yes, ROF and bullet spread are directly correlated, which means that weapons with low ROF generally have low bullet spread. That doesn't make heavy weapons accurate, though; it makes them precise. Precision is what you need for destroying small stationary targets. Accuracy is what you need for destroying moving targets.
@@lookitsrain9552 Yep. I am currently investigating low attention a bit more indepth and there is quite some weird stuff going on when compared to high attention. Devs gonna have fun with another 5 page report on that. =D
![X4 Oversimplified: Minor Guide to the Major Factions [New & Improved!]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0RlN855SxeM/mqdefault.jpg)
Great tutorial ! The moment you mentioned cost efectiveness i was like " god bless this man !". Because from my experience reddit and most other channels either have no clue what they're doing OR are in the stage of the game when credits just doesnt matter anymore and "raptor full of torp chimeras " (with mk4 engines ofc) is the suggestion for a good fleet...
Its nice to see someone aproaching the topic from basics.
I should stop underestimating your simplyfied explanation capabilities =D
I appreciate the slowly increasing “less than x hours long”
To paraphrase a redditer’s rule of thumb:
Fighters squadrons beat destroyers.
Destroyers beat stations.
Stations beat fighter squadrons
And I add that it’s good to have a mixture of at least two of those to take a battleship.
I think that’s a great starting point for a beginner in the early game for planning purposes.
Matrix #451 is a nice sector for this video. Well explained, like always 👍
Thank you.
I had no idea Escape Velocity could be so simple!
when overcomplicated series?
Haha, I thought maybe my "scientific" testing videos would count as an overcomplicated series!
The main problem of X4 is fleet composition.
Can you build a viable fleet of 100% S ships? Yes. 100% large ships? Yes. A mix between them? Also yes.
This could be fixed with MORE ship specialization. VRO mod tries to do that, but it's just a rebalance mod, making bigger ships more durable. It doesn't really add new mechanics.
You can see it as a problem or an opportunity. Personally, I think having numerous "viable" fleet compositions is a good fit for a sandbox-style game like X4.
@@CptSnuggles07 There is a difference between "numerous viable fleet compositions" and "everything works". The latter means bad balancing
@@Rinshun_ No one ever accused Egosoft games of being balanced. I already made a video on that topic (#3 in this series). Still, "everything works" isn't accurate. There are huge quantitative differences in the performance of different fleet compositions for different applications. I'm just wrapping up some in-depth research on that topic and will release the video soon, so stay tuned!
@@CptSnuggles07 IMO lots of people get balance mistaken for what should be "niches". It isn't that the Gunship class is unbalanced against Corvettes, but that it doesn't (at least any more) have a niche for it that IT fills better than either the Frigate or Corvette), and it isn't that the Nova is unbalanced against Perseus but that the Nova lacks a niche to fit in, so compared to the Perseus it is woefully slow but not fast enough turning to make the difference.
Things should have a niche, a unique value proposition that that ship can best fill.
Hence for the Argon I suggest fitting a "free" (because no model change is needed) missile launcher, at least for most of their ships.
The Discovery has the niche of the hybrid fighter-scout, it IS a lot slower than the paranid scout, but it has two weapons so it might be slower, but it makes, for the "main three races" a good interceptor, because it is fairly fast and fairly well armed. IT has a niche. The Kestrel and Gannet are both smuggling ships, and so have a niche (they also, because they have capacity, a niche as pirate ships), so the scout class is generally "balanced", not by actual stats, but by having actual niches, even if the AI and order lists available don't enable that, they potentially could.
Not so much the base fighter class. Or Gunships.
And the Carriers mostly got badly nerfed. The ZeusE was hit hard, bigger but carrying a LOT less, but rather than undo that nerfing, or pointing out it was twice as fast as the Collosus, so carrying half the ships was fine, they nerfed the other two race carriers for the base game races. The Raptor still gets 120 docks. So IT didn't get nerfed, but the others did. I would up the small ship capacity of the ZeusE, even if that means dropping a couple of M class docks, just so it can still operate AS A CARRIER, just not needed for most ships, because the Paranid as a whole have decently fast ships, so don't need a carrier, except for the Theseus and Ares. I'd then put more docks in the Collosus and more drones with the Phoenix, not really as balance, but that they occupy different niches:
Niche 1) Player Ship/Support Carrier. The Zeus E can do it, the speed is more important than the dock count. See also the Boron carrier.
Niche 2) Attack By Rush. The Collosus can do that, given the Nova is pretty darn cheap if fitted out cheaply, so the losses will be high, but they will be cheap, and so fitting, say, 48 small ships out cheaply will beat 28 ships fitted expensively (just lose against 120 ships)
Niche 3) Bullet Sponge. The Condor can do that, while its slow fighters chip away at shields, and plentiful drones keep the shields from regenerating, but it can't chase down a target that nopes out of the battle.
Niche 4) Power Fantasy. The Raptor. Lots of guns and lots of fighters launched, but all of them REALLY expensive. It's a lot, and if someone masses 5 Collossi against you, you will lose, but 1 on 1 you will win so easily you will minimise losses by roflstomping your opponent.
Niches. Balance would mean that the ZeusE is the same as the ColossusE the same as the CondorE, just with different skins. Balance means they operate differently, and failure means you operated them badly, not that it was nerfed or weak.
The Destroyers generally did fine with the nerfing, but since the old ones were still carriers, still able to take 40 small ships, someone will miss the older versions and complain bitterly if they were removed from play. Make them carry more drones instead of 40 fighters, and you might find that almost nobody, or actually nobody, misses the old sentinel/vanguard destroyers because you couldn't really use those 40 docks, but an extra 20 drones that COULD be used were golden.
Same for the Support ship class. Sure, it didn't need 50 docks, only enough to rearm/resupply the fleet it was attached to, but it needed enough cargo space to DO that task, and the Aux ships fail at that utterly. If they held more, you'd use them as traders, if they pre-made the stuff, so it didn't cut into their meager hold space, some may just eschew the rest of the fleet, just go ham with missile spam turrets and 2-5,000 missiles and 500 lasertowers. But IMO if that is a problem, MAKE it not a problem, but it may well not be a problem anyway: the Aux can't have a lot of turrets, and its shields are poor, so it makes a bad fleet arm. If needed, just cut the number of turrets it can have, or only allow gun turrets, not missile turrets, and forbid it from having any way of deploying stuff, and if the "cost" of that is the price for an Aux that can rearm a complete fleet, then just about everyone will say "YEAH!". IMO if Aux pre-made missiles, drones, flares, etc, and it was from that pool it rearmed (with the same loadout you initially set the ship), and only if a specific arm order came in that asked for something not pre-made would it go to the cargo hold to create, otherwise the cargo hold was used to just top up the current loadout, then people would use the Aux class. As it is, they are just used as cheap carriers before you can afford actual carriers, hence reducing their docking space, doubly so now they also cut the carrier capacity to carry ships.
How do you get your paint scheme to show up by default like that?
Once you hit maximum reputation with a faction, you can set their standard paint job as your default using your Empire settings.
lol, left me hanging on the Reddit fleet composition that got wrecked.
I was planning to spend some time really picking apart that fleet, but it has so many issues that I just couldn't fit it into the video...
@@CptSnuggles07 lol no worries. It's a great video.
Fighters against a station loses to the hoards of beam turrets the Xenon stations have. And ANY M class can't last against graviton fire, it can't outrange them, and so it dies quickly. IMO the fleet was someone trolling, that is how bad it was. That fleet setup would work, if layered, on pure interception, but no corvette et al should EVER be in range of ANY graviton gun. Heck, even plasma turrets are dangerous, but graviton hits a LOT harder.
@@markhackett2302 I don't think they were trolling, I think they just wanted to talk about their quirky off-meta fleet idea, regardless of whether it was actually a good fit for the topic being discussed. It can indeed be a decent fleet for light to medium anti-ship duty. The video's closing footage shows it against a K battle group, against which it did just fine, aside from the couple of Ospreys that happened to waddle into graviton range.
@@CptSnuggles07 Well I did say the composition could well work on pure interception, so therefore only small and medium targets, but against a station, I still feel it is more likely they were trolling, IF THEY POSITED IT AS VALID FOR STATION ATTACK. Now, it could well be that they'd assumed it would be good on stations because they'd used it against fighters, and turrets don't move, so it should be easier, right? But if they said they'd used it against stations, especially Xenon stations (because of how many guns they can have), they were either poorly equipped 'twixt the ears or trolling you.
It does show how scenarios can change things, and one thing that the Xenon will do (and knowing this you, the player, CAN exploit it) is chase you down if you DARE attack a station. The NPC races are a LOT more lackadaisical on this point, but you can be happily taking out a station and then a couple of Ks anvil you against the station, and the AI will get shot by the station or the K or both trying to fly somewhere to retaliate. Or your destroyer can get just a bit too close and trigger 34,000 (it feels) defence drones that take you out by dogpiling and you can neither use your destroyers (because they are not able to hit) but also not able to use a mass of fighters (because they will then chase the drones to near the station, where the station will use its beam guns to take you out).
It also is why I advise at least SOME beams on capitals, just to keep the shields of small fighters from recharging, but also they are the best to hit a drone attacker. The final bit is make "defend ship" either keep that defender a LOT closer, or to introduce a new "close defence" order so that you can surround your destroyers with some gunships on "Defend Destroyer" that stick REALLY close to the destroyer ship it is defending but equipped with beam turrets and pulse main weapons, a well balanced defensive arm that for the Paranid/Split can only be replaced with either the larger and more expensive Frigates or the less turreted Corvette (so you may well field them with mostly beam mains and therefore light tracking missile turrets). The Corvette is a much more aggressive ship, but you can fit it out to do well as a defence item, but a gunship, having more turrets that therefore do not require the base platform to nose onto target, makes a better defence ship, just a less useful direct attacker itself.
The Minotaur is poor for that, but if you build it up as a throwaway item with cheap stuff, then I suppose it has a point to the fleet, but the AI don't DO things that way, it still wants to fit Mk2 stuff all over the minotaur, negating its only advantage, its cheap hull, but losing badly because it can't benefit from good engines because it is so slow and having only two shield slots it can't benefit from those expensive shields. This is why IMO the Colosus needs to have 50 ish small fighters, in the E designation, because the AI will house cheap Novas with low settings and just Zerg rush, and those 10 Mediums (or 12...) packed with cheap low setting Minotaurs, making up with low quality ships by using lots of them. The player will then put all Chimera or Ares or Eclipse with Mk4 Split Combat engines etc, because they have them free from their own shipyard, so it will be "OP" but it mixes Paranid and Split with the Argon carrier for "best of breed" hybrids. That isn't an option for the NPC races. If the player wants so many ships, they'd pick a Raptor and fit twice as many on board, so being able to cheese it is not a factor.
If the Colossus went 48/12 the Zeus went 24/6 and Condor 40/10 internal docks, the Condor getting 10-15 more drones, the Zeus was the fastest, the Colossus the slowest (of the three), then each have a niche, and the Zeus is twice as fast as the slowest, but carries (slightly more than) half the number of ships, it has a use, the fast carrier of a PC. The Condor just GETS to a conflict and ITS fighters are used to attack near the carrier (or the Teladi station being attacked) while those drones are used to distract small craft and tie up turrets so their slow but well shielded standard ships take out the targets. And the Colossus zerg rushes, trying to overwhelm 5 on 1 while the M class ships are close pickets to the carrier or support ships for Ps or Bs to be taken out quickly because those are the two that are the biggest threat to the low class fighters fielded.
Of course it calls for the AI to be better, not only for pathing, but also in what it asks for to be made. Not "one carrier and five corvettes", a carrier that is waiting for 30-40 fighters to be aboard, not 4-5 because that is all that can be ordered in a mission. I think this is why the carriers got so nerfed: instead of making better missions for a FULL carrier (or fighters to be sent then via AI ownership TO a carrier waiting), they just cut the complement of a carrier instead. So rather than ask for 30 ships, cut carriers to only hold 20, and then asking for 8 doesn't seem quite as silly.
Le sigh.
"Carriers try to stay at range"
Me, watching my Tokyo charge a Xenon station and die: "They do?"
Yes, I know, it's AI issues and me not micro-managing every aspect of the fight myself, but I gotta try to laugh at my own expense otherwise it gets depressing to watch ships die needlessly.
Most of time it's turret orders. Never use attack all enemies, because only L plasma out range Xenon turrets. If a turret can target something, the AI will try to get close enough to use it.
Theoretically, carriers shouldn't do that if they have any S/M subordinates capable of attacking the station. If all their subordinates are dead, or set to "docked", or set to an assignment other than Attack, they'll absolutely just charge into the station's guns. Coordinate Attack also makes them do that sometimes, if the fleet commander wisely determines that the staging point should be on the exact opposite side of the station.
@@CptSnuggles07don't they also have an extra layer associated with attack orders in the behaviors? because I could tell, in the menu/info screen, a ship to only disable it's targets, or something else but I haven't explored more into that area
You are probably doing something wrong.
@@franciscowillam2411 Unfortunately "doing something wrong" is quite easy and since the game won't tell you, hard to spot and correct. That is why I feel "niche" is a better thing to strive for, because that niche will inform how NOT to do something wrong. Indeed I think that the reason why torpedoes are considered OP is because they state a niche quite clearly: fire at range then run while the reload happens. Guns not so much.
A pity why Gunships are no longer bombers is because they now can carry much fewer missiles. Not a problem for the Peregrine, because it is fast enough to do hit and run, but the Minotaur, not so much, and it isn't even well defended to boot. Terrible. But if the Minotaur, alone out of the gunships, carried a lot more missiles, maybe it just has ALL turrets set to tracking missiles and leaves the big main guns for M class take out antics. The Frigates ought to have at least SOME of the turrets as tracker missile turrets, because as a bullet sponge that will let them last longer against a swarm of fighters. The Minotaur should have enough that it can fit all four turrets as tracker launchers, and use the missile spam as disruption, sitting in the middle of the cloud, or pacing whatever ship it is defending, using main guns only if missiles run out or there happens to be a use for them because the enemy decided "I'll just rush straight at them". That would give it a niche that the peregrine can't as easily fill.
Rip drag coefficients
My Fleet comp 1x Asgard 2x Syn 4x Osaka. 😂
That usually works! Just hope you don't need to get anywhere fast...
You guys might be wondering what the best weapon is for your player S and M ships. It's MK2 Beam weapons with Slashers. Roll for 90% reload. Do NOT take my word for it, do it yourself. Get a Yasur or something with 4 hard points, put all MK2 Beams with Slashers. Better yet get a Chimera or Dragon, witness yourself become king of dog fighting.
I've stripped down Ks with this set up, not nearly as fast as Burst Rays and you can't strip the larger shields but still you can strip everything else.
i second this loadout. Beams are strong together. Making them have slasher with high reload makes them unli-beam!
You can also try a Kuraokami with 4x beam (slasher) & 1x thermal disintegrator (Slasher, Slayer, or annihilator) for a more "Jack of all Trades" loadout
@@lemonoeye I used 6 beams on a Pulsar. The damage is poor, but with 6 on tap, as long as the engagement has gaps between targets long enough to cool them off, then 6 beams does as much damage as 2 actual weapons, but hits far FAR more reliably In System.
Mk2 Burst Rays are, IMO too niche, they are FAR too good at taking out subsystems to not get (for the price) but then so terribly pants at any actual damage. The Mk2 should upgrade the Mk1 not by being even more powerful against subsystems, but being better balanced, so up the base damage but nerf the multiplier against subsystems. Mk1 Beams would be niche and upgrading to Mk2 would make them more general purpose, but still "oh you want to use this against subsystems too".
Radar range is a poor choice, because even 20% extra range is not worth it, even for pure scouts or a carrier, 50% it needs to be or you'd just take the drag mod instead. Same for travel time et al, they don't boost enough the relevant stats so you really want to take the polisher mod anyway where it increases top speed, travel speed, and so on, several things at a time, rather than merely one, so I'd make the drag mod, if it goes up to 20%, a 50% mod too.
Pirates also don't seem to take much notice you hid all the stuff and made it scan like biowaste instead, the police are "fooled", but pirates say "load up some poop for me, then, looks like I will sell THAT on the pirate market!!!!", the mod HAS TO stop pirates, otherwise only smugglers would bother, since only smugglers care if the police scan them.
I would really think battleships are on the top of the food chain?
Wether you buy a generic 15kk or 30kk destroyer, an average fighter wing of equal value will kill it most if not all of the time. If you specialise both to counter each other - fighters would still come out on top even stronger.
Fighters do suffer from casual atrition more though. And destroyers are the main anti-station platform ingame.
@ that was a typo, I meant battleships
@@blackfalcon1324 oh, my bad. Except the difference would be even more pronounced with battleships.
still not sure how to solve the sector-patrol problem (without using the reaction force mod) though.
seeing how intercept command works, I guess Guppy (on patrol command) with light fighters (on intercept command), with multiple other guppy sub-fleets mimicing the commander, should be the final solution (or having multiple guppy groups use protect-position to cover entire travel paths?). But I'm still a long way away from being able to print guppies :(
In the mean time I'm trying to use groups of [patrol katana + a few mimic katanas], but their behavior looks like "each katana picks a random friendly ship to escort", which in no way is providing the area-coverage that I need.
Technically I could try assign a couple interceptors to each katana, but that depends on whether the interceptors would also call the katana into action ... :/ (otherwise I expect the couple fighters would just die to khaak / pirates)
The Patrol and Police default behaviors are just hot garbage. I prefer using repeat orders, just a series of area attacks. If you're willing to dedicate a carrier to the cause, you can use Position Defense instead, spreading out your fighter groups and setting them to assist one another in combat. If you *really* want to use the Patrol behavior, Sapporo + interceptors + auxiliary is probably the best composition for S/M targets. Sapporo has double radar range, which means double interceptor range, and the aux ship can repair damaged interceptors in lieu of a carrier. That's assuming you have access to the Sapporo, though, which is easier said than done.
Sector patrols might be better now, if a call is now acted on, but that can still be missed, if a destroyer decides to pirate your trader, it might go boom before even you get a message on the tickertape. But that didn't happen at all, so all a patrol would do is nothing until a Red Enemy came into radar range. That was bad. That also was the only actual niche for Frigates, too, or gunboats (if you were cheap or silly), as bullet sponges while the small fighters with it demolished its attackers. There's some fix for that, but it often doesn't appear to work, so can't tell if it is just confirmation bias or what.
The sector patrol should go to anyone YOUR stuff, including your satellites, spot as an enemy (or, for traders "attacked by pirates", BEFORE that enemy status because it sent a threat to the trader), even if it is 100km away out of radar range, and speed matters only in getting there before your asset dies.
My problem is never with composition its my damn AI pilots not withdrawing from combat when I give the order, and going kamikaze with a K while I'm sending in plasma with my destroyer at range. I love this game been playing it for 20 plus years but still they can't get the AI right, granted its not always retarded and it does have its shining moments, but its random at best. As far as AI has come in this day and age it would be a wet space dream if they could implement it in X, that and allow for at least a 40 man co op server.
Plasma Guns are incredible accurate.
Try shooting mines or Laserturrets with Boltguns or Pulse, then repeat with Plasmaguns.
"Light" Waepons miss 90% of it's shoots while Plasma hits those small targets with 90% (roughly) of it's shoots.
Yes, they are accurate, but they are really slow, making it real hard to hit anything in a dogfight with them. plus the horribly bad heat efficiency.
Laser towers and mines are tiny targets, so yeh, the spread on the pulse laser does miss a lot. Its more of a special case.
Your plasma fighters wont win against other fighters. Extremely low hit rate with extremely low sustained dps does not work well here.
I've noticed the same thing with the Boron small weapons - the short range low rate of fire cannon is so much more reliable at hitting mines that it's not even funny. This might be a trait of heavy weapons in general - they get damage and accuracy against stationary targets, at the cost of either range or projectile speed. Because having all of that would let them bully fast fighters, a thing they're not made to do.
@@kajarslibrary5404 Except in low attention, where only dps for the most part matters and they autowin, its quite silly.
Yes, ROF and bullet spread are directly correlated, which means that weapons with low ROF generally have low bullet spread. That doesn't make heavy weapons accurate, though; it makes them precise. Precision is what you need for destroying small stationary targets. Accuracy is what you need for destroying moving targets.
@@lookitsrain9552 Yep. I am currently investigating low attention a bit more indepth and there is quite some weird stuff going on when compared to high attention. Devs gonna have fun with another 5 page report on that. =D