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X4: Foundations \\ Is it worth investing in Mk2/3 Fighter gear, or go for numbers instead?
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- Опубліковано 16 сер 2024
- 00:00 Intro & Problem
00:59 Short introduction to the "Cheat-Menu" - mod
01:29 Fighter equipment
02:26 Fleet setup
03:33 Results and conclusions for
04:16 Further testing
04:58 Plasma Cannon Kyd's vs I and Summary
Thanks a lot for another very detailed video. For swarming xenon capitals my experience was that a swarm of Lux with 2 blast mortars were very effective.
Might I recommend trying ship with pulse lasers and tracking launchers loaded with heavy cluster or scatter (cluster if you want to kill, scatter if you want to shred surface components). I found the ai would tend to act as turrets with the mortars and float around the caps like a gunship. But chuck the pulse on and they behave as a fighter diving in and out. Survivability goes up tenfold. The launcher is the damage dealer.
What my testing showed is that numbers>>speed>>firepower>> everything else.
If fighter is shot by enemy it will go into defensive and will basically try to survive, very rarely shooting back. So the faster other fighters clear their own part and intervene into the duel the better.
Quality comes into play once carriers with limited number of slots become a factor. Travelling carrier can often get ambushed by random K and figuring out how to get good enough fighter and bomber wing in limited slots could be really expensive and time consuming.
Something as simple as a discoverer w/1x tracking launcher loaded with heavy cluster, w/1x pulse, and all mk2 thruster shields and engines will fit bomber roll ok, all for a little over 300k. Any fighter will do for aa, just as long as it has a good boost speed and 250m/s+ speed, have them in pairs with subordinate set to attack and as one boosts away you're guaranteed to have at least one other fighter shooting the target. Just note the pairing up of fighters slows how they respond to commands for some reason.
To add to this: better equipped ship swarms are more of a "you've won the game now what?" goal than a practical one. MK3 swarms of fighters in the same numbers will obviously perform better but are way more expensive, so its pretty much something you do once you've already won the game and are looking to optimize your battle fleets using your own ship production capacity.
UA-cam algorithm send me here. I love watching tests and having the results explained to me.
Again, thanks for sharing your findings. I had a similar debate in my head.
I like the Eclipse with all Argon Tech (I don’t mix tech ARG/ANT ok, ARG/TEL no).
I usually build an Eclipse with 2 Pulse, 1 Ion and 1 Plasma. Works well against fighter and capitals. However Ion (Especially Mk2 is expensive).
Before I can build them myself I go all MK2 except weapons MK1 and change the ion to Plasma.
Later all Max. 2 Carrier with 40 Eclipse each (20:20 intercept : Bombard) can handle most Xenon attacks. They won’t be able to kill stations without huge losses, this is the job for my Behemoths.
I like your approach with cheep swarms, may try a large fleet of cheep Discoverer. Death by 1000 cuts.
Very informative, I've always gone the upgrade route but this has given me pause for thought
I always wondered exactly that! Kudos for testing this out!
Another thing I'm curious about is if there is a system that overperform others. For example:
- What if you remove their shields to make them even cheaper?
- Keeping the shields but equipping only a single weapon instead of 2?
- Mk3 weapons + Mk1 shields VS Mk1 weapons + Mk3 shields... (and other combinations with engines aswell)
I chose the Kyd, cause it had the most weapon slots per money spend in case i havent overlooked something, and at first I wanted to leave the shield unequipped, but then I realized that Mk1 shields cost nearly nothing in relation to the overall ship price and left them equipped.
Of course, it would be a try to equip only one gun and increase the ship count, but I think in this case it would be contraproductive cause I already paid for the shiphull/gearslots. But I can test this at some point.
@@immi9748 Yeah... shields mk1 are dirt cheap. Probably wouldn't make sense to remove them.
Let me add another interesting question: Considering the same amount of resources spent, which one fares better in combat? An S fighter with many weapons and few shields (Quasar), or sacrificing weapons for a shields, like a Falcon or Buzzard?
@@Rinshun_ sry for the late answer, for some reason the comment had to be approved.
I could imagine that the quasar is already to squishy but no idea. could imagine that a swarm of cheap sturdy fighter with less guns is outperforming squsihy ones with lots of guns. Lots of guns on one ship also means less ship for the available ressources cause guns are expensive.
Have to test it at some point.
@@immi9748 Another example is Gladius VS Kalis. They are the exact mirror; 4/2 and 2/4 Weapons/Shields
But I think you are right. Having lots of ships is beneficial because the enemy's firepower gets dispersed, allowing time for ships to recharge their shields. And if the ships are sturdy, they won't get instantly destroyed by a single burst of fire.
Thanks for the insights!
Thank you!
I've usually gone for quality over quantity, simply because I have less micro managing when it comes to replacing ships, and I can keep the fleet sizes smaller. This video won't change that, but it was interesting nonetheless.
Sometimes, when I need some breathing room and the Xenon are super aggressive, I build a large number of S-ships with a theoretical high damage output, like mass drivers, and have the ships otherwise be as cheap as possible. And with large number I mean something between 200 and 500. Then I send them directly for the Xenon-Shipyards.
These fleets have been usually somewhat too effective and they are extremely unsatisfying in a gameplay way, it's very cheesy, but if you've no other options or just need to buy some time, throwing endless waves of cheap fighters at enemy stations works too damn well.
In non carrier defensive groups, I pair my fighters. This allows the other to shoot whilst the one being focused evades and drastically improves efficiency and survivability - much like a real wing operates in a dogfight. But it doesn't work well in carrier ops, as the subordinate/wingman will launch and dock anytime the lead gets a change of order, it drastically slows your launch and recovery times, and impares how the position defence command works (the key power of carriers imo).
I think numbers is better...to a point. I've found 4 fighters in a group is the sweet spot for me. Any more, and they diminish in efficiency, any less, and they tend to get swarmed in larger battles. And sure, you can spend your 12 mil on lots of junk, but you lose them so quick. You need a balance.
I like to run my carrier groups: 6 wings of 4 heavy fighters with gats and t.launchers with light guided missiles; 1 wing of 8 heavy fighters with, at least, a pulse and a tracking launcher loaded with clusters (my fighter bomber wing); and 1 wing of 4 fast interceptors (anything with travel speed of 5k+ is fine, guns not important, they're just there to catch and pin). Escorted by 2 destroyers (Rattlesnakes are my prefered, but any will do). Stage the carrier back, set 2 fighter wings on pos defence 50ish km forward with reinforce off, 1 at carrier with reinforce on, destroyers on pos def just behind fwd fighter screen with reinforce on. Set bomber wing to bombard and launched, and remaining wings to intercept and launched. It's a 'minimal' carrier group that is powerful and flexible enough (both HA or LA) to deal with anything.
Oh, and the carrier also has a couple of couriers for drops supplies and rescue, and 2 scouts, and 2 M haulers as boarding dropships
I did a tests a long time ago and I have cost/dps excel sheets somewhere.
The most cost-effective chassis is the water syndicate owned and I built around 5k of them with mk1 plasma guns and cheapest other stuff.
It was not enough to take down one medium-sized NPC station.
You've built 5000 ships and attacked a station with them ?
Thanks a lot for the great video.
What do you think about the Pulsar, who with the same layout would be double the cost, but due to its 6 hardpoints offer 3x the damage output.
As I understand it, the fitted Shih would cost about 4.5x as much, but would only have 2x the damage output. While Pulsar would cost 2x and offer 3x the dmg output.
So while reducing the amount of ships with Shih by 4.5x would also reduce your theoretical dmg output, reducing it by half with Pulsar would increase your dmg output by 1.5x
@immi
You might wanna try s sized ships also. They get higher change to be missed and dmg reduction based on how fast they go for low attention. Probably much better than m sized for low attention fighting. At least from the info I can find online. Could be wrong.
In my experience, M combat ships are only good in the players hands. With the exception of the Falx, which, when coupled with 2 destroyers, are amazing boarding ships.
Would be curious how mk1 thermal disintegrator would fare against an I.
Also the most cost-effective trading ship for volume is one of the medium sized ships. Even in sectors with no highways.
I was seeking my old sheets and it seems I deleted all of my calculations and test results. I only found references to Demeter sentinel being the best. Best small trader which is more cost effective than most effective L trader is magpie if I read my old notes right.
The game cannot handle many ships well though. So said my save with over 50k ships when I last time played.
I watched through the new ships in the 7.0 Beta and there might come some changes to L trader.
If it's no bug the Heron E got 62,000 cargo capacity with a travel speed of around 2900 (depending on the engine). I hope they use the beta to rebalance L trader but who knows.
Good work on this... Will be useful for folks attempting to clear xenon territories
Any thoughts about analyzing different methods of countering a xenon station? (Without the unrealistic micromanaging of L ships)
there is a solution that ships dont have to move around but I have to find out how to contoll the AI ;D
Thanks for video...
Especially in fights with many enemies, Lanchester's square law applies.
First time I've heard of the law, thanks for mentioning it. 🙂
It's interesting to know about it.
Nice video and breakdown. I often see cheap mass production outperforming the high costs, so it's not so surprising in the end, but it's nice to get another view on it.
I'm running 7.00 beta, and the cheap fighter crafts against L/XL is near impossible now with turret overhauls. Speed particularly and shield power really comes to play on your bombers, and you REALLY don't want paper planes around L/XL ships anymore. Turrets actually tracks and hits targets properly now... And don't get me started on Kha'ak destroyers with escorts... (Boron turrets still suck a** of course.)
They're not much different in comparison to fighter vs. fighter combat, so there are still some uses for carriers when you find bombers that survives or can complete a single release kill.
Thanks for the Info.
Then the question is, how relevant is fighter vs fighter still?
Otherwise it is still possible that turrets will be adjusted further during the beta.
@@immi9748
Don't get me wrong, you'll still very much die to a swarm if you're alone in an L/XL. But the painful watch of 5 fighters taking down an L is done.
The costs of driving paper planes are just higher than you would expect from 6.00 to 7.00. They pretty much made speed and shields on a fighter more relevant, and given the designed role more dedicated work. Fighter Vs fighter and bomber Vs L/XL.
As fighters tend to "hover" on their target to release a volley, turrets will absolutely shred them apart. Maybe they'll work on that particular issue, but I don't see that as a bad thing to be honest.
@@immi9748
Kha'ak destroyers though are another field entirely. Their beam turrets are OP as hell (tracking and projectile speed) and your bombers die faster than anything.
Damage output is not enough for taking on a lot, but they'll catch your fighters and bombers and will shred them apart if you don't take it down fast. So cheap builds (because you will lose quite a few no matter what) or go with destroyers yourself.
They module impairs xenon I and K in less than a minute. The only balance I can think of that would be somewhat required down the line.
I experienced some weired fighter behavior today in the Beta while Out of sector. Means they stand still while have a target, or they just rotated in place. Shortly, they had navigation problems and couldnt engage the target. Not that this adds to the problem that fighters are shredded right now.
@@immi9748
That does indeed sound weird. Haven't experienced that though, so can be a single incident or bug that hasn't registered with my save or game.
The navigation is indeed problematic OoS, so may have triggered some underlying problem. Mine just stops responding to new commands from the leader for a while, but if I jump in or wait 5-10 minutes they'll usually reset themselves. Once or twice I had to manually reset my fleet in the sector, but that happened in 6.xx too on occasion.
i recently found your chanel and love how you analyse things.
Dont know i you already tested it but im looking for effective way to disarm Capital ships that want to be freed from their Owners so i can board them, without having to shoot all the turrets my self.
I Tryed with ~30 Kyd i got when taking over Windfall. But they all dyed and only 1 turret and 1 engine was damaged.
(possible because of weapon pack mod)
Hi, I guess you search for something affordable from early on also? I try to stop to promise that I will do certain stuff, because there are already so many things going on in my head. But yeah, tomorrow my X4 break is over, so there is a certain chance I will come back to it.
@@immi9748 Im looking for that in early and late game.
FlyBy Boarding seems a bit too cheaty^^
Have fun with the DLC :)
@@immi9748 actually im looking for mid to late game while getting lazy and not wanting to do the disarming mannually.
@@legonz5047 The problem with disarming ships I experienced is that I have to watch the battle because otherwise surface elements aren't destroyed.
So far, I have good experience with 10-15 eclispe with burst rays. I think the problem with Kyds is, that they cant apply enough damage in one run against a turret at once and need more attack cycles.
The problem with capturing S/M ships is that the player has a bonus to motivate the enemy crew to abbandon their ship by shooting at them, when I remember correctly. Accordingly for me my NPC ships have a bad chance to put the opposing crew to flight.
Its like khaak fleets. Useless in low numbers but very effective in large numbers. Also beams are more deadly against the player than anything else xD
"quantity is also quality" - Stalin.
Maybe good to test smtg vs main weapon and compare smtg vs turret weapons only to compare performance of ships with main weapon vs turret weapon (L or M class). smtg - can be same class or other.
Just idea, if you interesting in ideas :) Good work.
can you run the same test but with the moreya? this ship has vastly different speed than others while having 4 weapon slots and test vs a cheap ship and also the boron irukandji might be interesting as well due to how strong their shields are and unique Gatling gun
I would like to say yes, but I'm currently in a twist because I can't say how strong the changes in the current BETA will affect the game in the future and therefore I would like to wait with these kind of finetuning tests until it is clear in which direction the games goes. I would like to keep going with more overall trends where little things don't have a huge impact. Like looking at the combat effectivness of M vs S. I hope you can understand my current dilemma since these test take some time.
What is high attention and low attention?
also known as "in and out of sector". The game simulates some things differently in your immediate surroundings.
Which brings us to the fact that some people don't like the term "in sector", because being in a sector doesn't automatically mean you're close enough for the game to change its simulation method.
Bravo! You day job has to be in BI, accounting, or data analytics sir! Great vids. Thanks
Interesting.
Fighters seem to work like moving laser towers ;-)
The more the better!
As for attacking the I - maybe things like blast mortar or other very high damage output long range weapons might be the thing to go for low attention mode?
Best guns and engines.... most important
Guns are also at the top of my priority list. =)
For the engines the SPL combat is common sense right now from what i got. But I can have a look at them some point.
I would recommend these budget ships:
Lux has good values
Nodan V. is cheap
Asp Raider has 3 guns
But they are no Chimera😂
Shih is a good allrounder for defence operations, but lacks in speed.
Mass fighters can be very powerful, but this test intentionally ignores pilot skill as a variable. As skill develops over time, and equipment loadout is not a decision for a single battle skill can't really be ignored. You will always want to be avoiding losses now matter how you equip your ships, and avoid taking battles that would result in losses. Better equipment will give better survivability, if the increased numbers would make a difference in your losses, it isn't a fight you should have taken to begin with. Skilled pilots are more valuable than the credits or ship parts. If you only have 12.5mil of investment in a military fleet you shouldn't be blockading a xenon gate yet and face that number of enemies. Poorly equipped ships are more likely to be killed by random Xenon P focus firing, or xenon ships coming out of the gate guns blazing before your AI even recognizes there is a threat. In scenarios like these, it doesn't always matter how many ships you have, just the amount of damage your ships can take. Be it quality or quantity - I'd say why not both? Both is good :)
I'm aware of your discussion, so let me add some things.
I showed the pilot skills during the video. I didn't mention it by word. set all pilot skills to 5/15 in piloting, 3/15 in morale, 1/15 in management, 1/15 in engineering, and 1/5 in boarding. I don't think we can expect piloting skills of 3 stars (9/15) for random pilots.
For the defense part, yes, in the scenario used, it is not possible to avoid losses, and therefore, no matter how strong the shield, we just end up losing a more expensive ship and, at the same time, firepower.
If we cannot avoid losses, we can split up the resources and invest them in different ships, so a part of our investment can keep fighting if we lose a ship.
I have no clue why you brought up the gate defense part. And you are completly right, I would put something like a defense station in front of a gate, thats why I didn't let come Xenons through a gate in the test and kept it as open engagement. But what I want to add is, that I even can bring up interactions between different ship types to make it even more complicated, so we have to go a even long way until we have results or maybe never, cause time is a limiting factor. Or we go step by step and have something at hand we can use early on.
If we have fights like 5 vs. 5, the survivability of a single ship is increased with more shield in case they don't focus it down. But we can also say we spend the resources on 10 ships instead of 5 expensive ones and have an easy time with those 5 enemies cause we can keep the pressure up on the enemy while one of our ships is trying to avoid being shot, the other one has an easy time firing at the enemy. It is mostly more difficult to get into firing position if you are chased than if you just have to follow a trajectory.
I also didn't ask if we could choose the fight. Of course, a fight that results in losses is something we should always avoid. But sometimes they are not avoidable.
And I think I clearly showed that we can turn a situation into a decisive victory if we spend only little amounts of resources the right way.
@@immi9748 I brought up gate defense as I see it it is the most realistic scenario where you would encounter 31 Ms. Building a gate defense station works, but you likely won't get it off the ground without a fleet to protect it during construction. I don't like them though for a couple of reasons: they are a permanent solution to a temporary problem (the xenon controlled sector), and they deny your fleets a chance to skill up. If they do double duty as recyclers that can be good though. Usually in my playthrus I can build a serviceable gate defense fleet before I even have the rep to get L Turret blueprints to arm a station with anyway.
@@tonytwotimes2859
I get your point. Do you have experience with Ospreys? They can take some punch before they can react and I think they are affordable in the stage of the game you talking about. But it could be expensive if the next bigger ship to the P comes through.
I never used Ospreys maybe I should test them out.
And I appreciate your criticism even if I have the tendency to be a bit harsh. It helps to widen the view.
@@immi9748 Ospreys are terrible because their speed makes them especially vulnerable for to this - low skill pilots are also part of that problem. I do however keep the Free osprey you can find in company regard, in each of my playthrus (as well as any other ship I can get my hands on that I otherwise consider "unique") and the osprey has proven again and again to be a huge liability... I think overall the osprey is the worst ship in the game, it's only advantage it's drone capacity which allows it to deliver drones to fledgling stations with fewer clicks than other frigates (but it still delivers at a slower rate due to it's speed)
@@immi9748 In all my saves, I always keep any ships I deem "unique" and that includes the abandoned Osprey you can find out in Company Regard. I have tried outfitting it in various ways, but has time time and time again proven to be a huge liability. It's abysmal speed contributes to the problem of it being focus fired (pilot skill is also a factor in this). Extra hull or not, no frigate can withstand being focus fired by 3 Xenon Ps for long. With 3 Ps being such a common Xenon group, I find it to be the worst ship in the game because it is unsuitable for it's primary function - combat. I now use it to buy and transfer missiles to ships that don't have missile weapons for ship delivery missions (other frigates could do this better due to more weapon slots) and to deliver spare completed drones to fledgling stations in fewer clicks than other frigates can do. (though it's horrible speed still makes it deliver more slowly than any other frigate despite it's better drone capacity, but at least its less micromanagement)
Mk3 is ridiculously expensive, but how big difference was there between Mk1 and Mk2 ?
I should have marked the datapoints. Mk2 weapons where extremly worse since they are to pricy. Here I came down from 33 to 19 ships already. Upgrading shields was the 2nd worst. Got the feeling that maneuverability and speed are two important factors since they increase the offensive and defensive cababilities, even the thruster and engine upgrades let to worse results. Cause that, I would rather seek them on the ships next after the (gun count)/price.
@@immi9748 So conclusion: Mk1 everything, and if want to waste some money, Mk2 thrusters and engines.
Thanks for video...
What is high attention and low attention?
High attention is while being in the same sector in view distance. Low attention is leaving the sector or at least fly far enough away to be outside of the render distance and therefore getting an alternate damage calculation. You can also call it "in sector" and "out of sector", as it was often called among the community in earlier X titles.