If you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button and subscribe to my channel, it helps my videos get more viewers, more attention which helps my channel to grow. I have created a gaming community on Discord, if you want to chat, talk with others who play strategy games, keep up to date with new videos or maybe join in multiplayer games, feel free to join my discord. If you have ideas on videos you would like to see or some other form of comment, send me a message on discord or here. discord.gg/ynAdAGYKKf Consider joining this channel to show your support for the video's that I make. It helps me to keep this channel growing and providing more content and to get access to perks: ua-cam.com/channels/LJ1CRQN9vkjstRLyRU3G9w.htmljoin
Good point! I am still playing around with it, might be able to improve it more if I run the audio through some type of sound software after recording, but we see how this goes for a while. Thanks for the feedback.
I know these videos are mainly trying to find the meta but seeing how these ships go against a 'kitchen sink' doctrine would be nice (even if it doesn't teach too much)
What do you mean by Kitchen sink, just random builds of whatever. It is not so much trying to find a meta, it is trying to find new ways of doing combat. Everyone thinks Artillery is king and it is to a certain point, I hope the last 3-4 videos shows other options for players to use that can beat artillery and be strong in its own right.
Nominating Neutron Launcher cruisers with Kinetic Artillery to beat the final plasma design. Especially with the lower shield capacity, the multiplicative damage should over power the regen I think
Yes, they would, but not testing mixed fleet designs as I would use other cruisers to counter them. Seeing how to counter Kinetic Artillery and found a few builds to do.
The X slot is kinda bad on plasma. Try x2 L slots with autocanons , or S-M-L with autocanons. If you go plasma, those are no more long range turrets , they are more cruisers on steroids. The X slot is fine if you go with arty ship design , but plasma is not the go go with. And you want 3 utility slots - 2 hardenings (or repaires) + 1 after burner to get into range. Also if stuck full armor to face kinetic fleet - just 1 plasma fleet or laser fleet will wrek you. I was saying in discord - I do run different fleets , I may have 1 kinetic , 1 plasma , 1 rocket fleet , just in case I need to deal with 1 specific target. At the very end they have in avarage pretty same efficincy , but in case you take a fight 3 different fleets vs 3 same composition - you can have an upperhand if one of yours is hight more efficient
I tried a number of weapons instead of X slot weapons, Kinetic Arty and Auto Cannons, it was terrible X slot was far superior. The A slots had 3 x nanites repairers. The point of the video is to show how to beat artillery battleships and even when they stacked full shields which nullify plasma, they did worse as the Ancient Saturator gives out the highest DPS of any X slot weapon when you have more shields to burn through hence why that did not work. Ofcourse you can use other fleet combinations to beat it, that's not the point. If you only run one ship design, then you leave yourself open to being countered easily. This is just to show how Artillery can be beaten with Plasma.
So… what do you think is your standard “go to” fleet against AI and when you don’t have much, or any, intel? I appreciate seeing what counters work, but it’s always difficult to figure out which design I should be building in my single player games.
Thats a good question, I should do a video to answer that very question. I would normally have fleets of Carrier & Artillery Battleships (will add Plasma or Laser now too), Torpedo Cruiser fleets using devastator torps with afterburners to deal massive damage and they help to tank damage to keep it off my battleships. Then I might have 3-5 fleets of corvettes with 2 x disrupters and PD/Flak, two designs with 50/50 split of each to swarm the enemy shot down strike craft/missiles and torps. That will be more than enough to deal with the AI. For crises you need to be more specific with weapon and defenses to counter each one.
@@tachyonlance1969 yeah, I meant in general not with the specific crisis fleets. I think a video would be very helpful! I see that question posted all the time on the forums.
Ok well I will try and work on something over the next week, as it is a very good point. Tell me, what would I call this type of video, a catchy headline for the thumbnail or title since it is your idea.
@@tachyonlance1969 Hmm... I'm certainly not one for catchy names, haha. Maybe something like "The Best Grand Admiral Fleet!" or "The Meta Go-To Fleet" or "Best Omni Fleet Design!"
AI never use hardeners, so bypass weapon will murder them. (disruptors, focus arc emitters, etc) Missile/torp is doing a good job too. Ships = cruisers.
First: the new mic is sounding quite good. Second: the result vs almost all shields was quite surprising again! Maybe Paradox over-nerferd shields in the last combat rebalance? Or maybe 3 Nanite Repair Systems are too good? To check this, could you please test all armor + 3 Nanite Repair Systems vs TL + all lasers first with line and then with artillery computers? If they can hold vs those builds then this is the best possible defensive option in which case you would have found a "strictly better build" for all battleships. Third: TLs do so much damage (as seen in each battle with the alpha strikes) that it could also be worth testing TL + plasma vs heavy shields to see if archeotech is a "must have" or just a "nice to have" for the plasma build.
Thanks for the feedback on the sound. Yes I want to do more testing to see if the nanite repair will work well with other builds to turn it from a loss and into victory or was it the shear power of the ancient saturator in both cases but even more so against builds with more shields. Great to use the ancient saturator against crisis heavy in shields like the unbidden. I will give your design some testing to see if they work well, looks good on paper.
That sort of plasma setup is what I generally prefer. Although ancient saturator is REALLY expensive to spam so idk how feasible that is. But I've found high damage armor/hull weapons to be superior to smaller damage weapons as you don't give the enemy any chance to retreat. And that's the problem I have with penetration weapons. Yes they do good dps but they get fewer kills overall so more often than not even a win is more of a Pyrrhic victory. Also against players I would guess one can assume that they will turn on the astral shield edict giving them some hardening even without having any direct counters in their designs.
Yes, plasma and energy weapons overall are great for kills. Bypass weapons might win some battles but yes more do retreat. That Astral edict for shield hardening is great, 25%, plus 25% shield strength. Expensive to keep running though, over 60 per month. But if you have a lot of Arc Furnaces you can actually get more of them and you can build Dyson Swarm around stars that have them (don't recall if you can get them around stars or not) and get like more per month but so for relics, can get 60-70 per month from one Dyson Swarm if you want to go that path.
@@tachyonlance1969 Yeah probably won't have it on at all times but you also aren't fighting game-changing battles 24/7 so with some micro I find that you can have it on for most if not all battles. Or you're just a pro-gamer and get the Eternal Throne. E: Pretty sure the astral threads are not affected by arc furnaces as they come from science stations but don't quote me on that.
Yes, like edicts, turn it on when you need it and then turn it off. Dyson Swarms can affect science as well, it just multiplies the science of the star by 3000%, not sure if you get any of those astral resources around stars though, I don't recall seeing any.
@@tachyonlance1969 Yeah I've seen people do some funny stuff with the event that adds artifacts to a star. Think they got like 60/month from that. Don't recall seeing any astral threads around stars though. Would be pretty potent. The other two astral edicts are pretty good as well.
Yea if you build a Dyson swarm around the star with the artifacts you can get 63 I think it is per month, that will be for a lot of upgraded archo weapons.
Yes, and it offers just more hits points in general although it is more costly as well. Hence why Ancient Saturator Cannon and Plasma will work so well against everyone stacking so much armor.
I've gotten Good use out of combination fleets with artillery and carrier battleships, and plasma and autocannon cruisers destroyers and Corvettes. Against everything except the fallen empires it really works quite well.
Good to know as I do want to start testing fleet combinations with this kind of setup on some future videos. I will give it a try. Thanks for the comment.
My analysis is a bit different... It might sound noob, but all the comparisons focus on the gun deppartment, and not so much on shields vs armour, and from the thousands of hours I have on the game, right now armour with nanite repair systems are OP in most situations, because it makes the ships way more tanky and can hold the impact on the first strike way better then shields or a balanced aproach.. But that is just me, I might be wrong. And the meta is kind of weird right now, not so certain, and for higher difficulties in the weapons deppartment it depends a lot on what your enemy is using and counter it.
You raise a good point and I have done some testing on nanite repair in the past but nanites were hard to come by then so no one really uses them too much. Not so now. I should do further testing using some of the strong builds but making it more amour and nanite repair and see how the results turn out compared to previously. It could be the nanite repair paired with high armour levels. So it would work even better with dragon scale armour for example. Thanks for the great comment.
@@tachyonlance1969 Well, I beliebe that the nanite repair system is important, because it also impacts hull if I am not mistaken, but the thing is that for most builds shields are becoming less and less strong. For example, unless you go full shields, they are always the lesser value when compared to armour or hull. Another thing is in smaller vessels, the higher tier shields are super energy hungry and you can't properly use them. Plus, if you want to use stealth, then shields are even worst, because of the nulification. And lastly, by using more armour you gain a few more % on excess energy that are converted to damage (altough not that game changing, it might help). I'm not saying shields are not important, I'm just saying they are not so much important in most game styles (except certain end game crysis, but that is super specific). Sorry for the long post ahah
I agree and it is why most players stack more armor these days. Shields in my opinion need a buff to at least make it an equal decision between the two or nerf armor a little. I will test out the impact of nanite repair more over the coming week on other ship designs as well and see how it goes.
I think the biggest problem with KA ships is their inability to snowball. They offer good damage over time, but with half of this damage being spread about the battle, it can only rely on the Tachyon lance to score kills when it comes off cooldown. You could try running a mix of Lance/KA/Plasma with 1 or 2 KA and 2+ Large Plasma. This would allow you to keep finishing enemies off between big hits from the Tachyon Lance. Otherwise, you can see how an all-energy weapon build works, running Lance/Lasers or Lance/Plasma. If you run lasers (w/ or w/o 2 Medium autocannons in stern) you wouldn't even need Decoders since all your weapons would hit 100% accuracy with the computer.
Yes a few people have suggested I try auto cannons on the stern as well to help with shields. Might be enough to give TL a try as well so you don’t have to use an ascension for archo engineers. I will try it out and see how it goes. Thanks for the comment.
Interesting. I'm now curious if 4 large plasma is better than than 3 large and 2 medium despite the 1 less utility slot. I'd also be curious what happens when you just do tachyon lance and 4 large plasma. I figure they wouldn't be effective against shields but would the hull damage overwhelm the adversary fleet?
I am interested in the TL and Plasma, but the Ancient Saturation Cannon did a mountain of work on the shields, I think it was over 300k damage pretty quickly, TL won't do that to shields so I think it would be a lot different battle. Or you can put 2 x autocannons on the M slots which will help but I still think it was the ASC that did the bulk of the work taking down the shields, but more testing is needed.
Surprised before making the jump to nanike repair I thought you might have gone double auto cannons to finish off remaining shields to not take such a large damage reduction to chew through it with plasma. In addition to keeping afterburner to get into range faster.
The ancient saturator is more than enough to deal with the shields, that thing is insane with this build. I can give it a go though rather than the extra 2 M slot plasmas. Need the nanite repair to make the ships more survival, going to do more testing on this. Thanks for the comment.
My thoughts were an auto cannon or two on each shin can eat away the others that the xslot hasn’t fired up but I’m not sure about the reload rate of the cannon compared the the regen of some ships’ shields.
Well it will be harder for weapons to get through them but you normally also increase damage as well such as kinetic or energy damage increase. Bypass is great but keep in mind if you play PvP some hardening techs will make bypass generally lose and sometimes the AI will use it.
How about a mixed battleship fleet of 50/50 of saturator/plasma & artillery/tachyon. I'm curious to see how fleets would perform with a mixture of ship designs in the same class
in general tachyon lance are better , they have weak punch on shields , the main advantage is the base precision and the 0 min-range. maybe a tachyon + plasma vs ancient saturator + plasma would make it visible if tachyon is worth it anyway .
I was thinking along these lines to see if the TL and Plasma or Laser could bust through the shields and then smash into the amour then hull, but the kinetic artillery would smash shields faster allowing their TL to attack armor faster but then the KA is at disadvantage vs the armor as well. So, it is really a race in who can out DPS the other with the various bonuses they have. Worth testing though.
You can further improve the cloud lightning design by swapping out large slots for mediums to replace a couple of the Cloud Lightning with some pairs of Phase Disruptors. They ship becomes more susceptable to kiting, but cloud lightning already has that weakness, and the dps is MUCH higher. In fact, for what I feel would be the optimal bypass battleship I'd take Hangar Core and Broadside Stern with Phase Disruptors and Advanced Strike Craft, or the best available. Cloud Lightning just have very low DPS compared to the equivalent weapon systems. I am aware that Disruptors are currently banned in the most major pvp lobbies, but cloud lightning is just kinda a bad weapon system.
Good points with improving the cloud lightning design will have to try it out. Not sure why disrupters are banned, destroyers with missiles and after burners kite them around and kill them with minimal losses at least the corvette version of them. Disrupter Cruisers cannot out DPS Cruisers with torpedos. So, I think it was a knee jerk reaction as there are plenty of counters to disrupters even early in the game, once you have Destroyers.
@@tachyonlance1969 I think it's mostly a psychological remnant of the fact that there was a pretty long time where disruptors were busted OP with no real counters. They're still quite strong even after counters have been added too.
Yea could be, plus I think in one tournament a few people used them a lot to good effect, clearly, they need to watch some of my videos I made on countering disrupters, even very early on. From memory kiting destroyers with either lvl 2 or 3 missiles killed all the disrupter corvettes with only a few losses.
@@tachyonlance1969 Fleet maneuver's pre combat make disruptors strategically toxic. If one side has disruptors and camps hyperlanes they cannot lose to anything but disruptors. Even if you use torpedoes, guess what you put in the other weapon slots on those torpedo ships? More disruptors. Even with the explosive damage combat computers The goal of banning anything is to increase the diversity of options, and banning disruptors drastically increases the number of valid ship designs.
Good point. Well, if players are camping jump points at least they are not invading you but can also be a strong defense if you are massively out gunned by a stronger player. In most of those PvP tournaments, never witnessed much camping of hyperplanes with people using disrupters.
Curious, did you leave the kinetic artillery at line combat computer? Plasma have a much better overall DPS but at 66% of the range, can suffer from being kited by speedier ships with longer range. Line computer gives up KA’s advantage, so maybe a try with KA, TL, and afterburners in artillery combat computer to get more shots first while also kiting away?
Yes, it remained at Line computer; I did say at the very end might need to try artillery combat computer to counter this powerful plasma build. But then you can just switch in lasers for plasma, and you beat KA at range as well as per my previous video. You could have 2 fleets, 1 with KA at line and one with KA for artillery, vs 2 fleets, 1 with laser and 1 with plasma. The Laser and Plasma wins.
One thing to remember about kiting: it seems to be determined by a half of a ship's median weapon range. With a Sentient Computer, Majority KA ships will only kite at 72 range, less than the standard range of Large Plasma or Lasers. This is possibly why in previous tests, Laser/AC BBs had no trouble staying in range to sustain laser fire.
Yes, you have that but also most of the battles take place on the edge of the system where they have no more room to fall back too and keep at range. Who knew you could run out of space in space.
Yes, it is easy to get. I was surprised when I stacked the shield in the last battle, I was expecting Artillery to win but the damage output from the Ancient Saturator on those shields was higher than anything I have ever seen for an X slot weapon. It has 150% bonus vs shield then add another 33% for the ascension. So even stacking shields which puts plasma at a disadvantage did not work as the Ancient Saturator made such short work of them, they did worse than when it was an even split of amour and shields.
Oh, very nice, well that explains a lot and makes it even better to use that ascension. Makes sense to be multiplicative as it is an ascension which is a large investment.
@@tachyonlance1969 Tho for machines their is this ascension that increases L slot XL slot and T slot weapons with an additional 15% so possible it was Mechromancy
Oh yes, I have seen that but not used it yet, so that adds more firepower output. As it is an ascension you would think that would be multiplicative again. You know this could be a powerful build potentially, you need 2 ascensions, but your fleets would be so powerful using these weapons. I am going to go have a look at it.
Mic sounds good. Plasma did quite well too. Curious how lasers will do now. i think the only counter is itself lol, or Lance/Plasma. Possibly Lance/ 1 KA + 2 L pla/ 2 M pla?
I did try 2 x KA instead of the Giga Cannon and Ancient Saturator, but it did so poorly was not worth including, using an X slot is just so much better then 2 x KA. I will keep testing laser, isn't there a relic or astral plane that gives +25% to energy weapons. I have not seen the same for kinetic weapons, they all have bonuses from edicts.
@@tachyonlance1969 There is the astral thing, but its expencive to use. I thought these tests was without edicts/repeatables right now because they change up the variables ALOT, especially repeatables. What i meant with the design was the first section has a lance, second section has 1 KA and 2 Large Plasma, and 2 medium plasmas in 3rd section. I think that might give it a run for its money.
I was just curious to know, I just recall seeing it as good to use in a game situation when you need to, if you can afford it. Sounds like a good design, worth testing out.
If you go for hardening, I'd say it's more useful to go either shields or armor, not both. 10k armor with 50% hardening or 10k shields with 50% hardening is a lot better than 5k and 25% on both. At least against 100% bypass because you'll almost always have more shields and armor than hull points, so your ships will die long before they run out of shield and armor points. I must say I expected the regeneration to perform better; I think it's safe to say that you were right about the regeneration having only 10% effectiveness during battle. Good, you can imagine how broken it would be at full strength. My fleets against the AI are almost indestructible so I must conclude that the AI just sucks at fleet and ship design. One thing I'd be curious to see is how a carrier fleet would stack up against the artillery ships, the strike craft should have a lot longer engagement range than even the X-slot weapons. If carriers prove to be effective, I'd also be curious to see whether the 3 hangar carrier design or the 2 hangar plus an x-slot carrier design would fare better. The strike craft engagement range gets a lot better with higher tier combat computers too (as long as you use the carrier computer obviously). My hypothesis would be that a carrier fleet with 3 carrier slots and 3 A-slots filled with after burners could kite the artillery fleet well enough to significantly reduce their ability to get shots fired; the carrier fleet should spread out really wide and try to be at max range forcing the artillery fleet to waste time chasing them and thus not being able to keep firing 100% of the time. The X-Slot Carrier design would have to make a decision between artillery combat computer for extra x-slot range and the added strike craft engagement range of the carrier computer.
Yes, the hardening would work a lot better with stacking it all to armor or shields but the point of the videos is to show strong builds without having to make it really niche or stack things so strongly to one side. OfCourse players can choose to do that but if you stack all armor, you risk being wiped out by someone who has a lot of energy weapons or vis versa for shields. As for carriers, no they get killed easily against Kinetic Artillery, KA is the direct counter to kill carriers very effectively. So, if you ever fighting AI or a human player using lots of Carriers, stack up that Artillery and you will wipe them easily.
Probably, plasma always did more damage just laser had a higher fire rate for continuous fire but it can't do enough damage fast enough to stop the Artillery, well not when combined with the TL which is also very powerful with the +20-line computer. Far more effective than using artillery. Right now, for X slot weapons, better of using line computer, you get much more DPS out of them.
If you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button and subscribe to my channel, it helps my videos get more viewers, more attention which helps my channel to grow.
I have created a gaming community on Discord, if you want to chat, talk with others who play strategy games, keep up to date with new videos or maybe join in multiplayer games, feel free to join my discord. If you have ideas on videos you would like to see or some other form of comment, send me a message on discord or here. discord.gg/ynAdAGYKKf
Consider joining this channel to show your support for the video's that I make. It helps me to keep this channel growing and providing more content and to get access to perks:
ua-cam.com/channels/LJ1CRQN9vkjstRLyRU3G9w.htmljoin
Good investment on the mic. Noticeable improvement (not an audio expert, but maybe its a bigger compliment if a layman notices it)
Good point! I am still playing around with it, might be able to improve it more if I run the audio through some type of sound software after recording, but we see how this goes for a while. Thanks for the feedback.
I know these videos are mainly trying to find the meta but seeing how these ships go against a 'kitchen sink' doctrine would be nice (even if it doesn't teach too much)
What do you mean by Kitchen sink, just random builds of whatever. It is not so much trying to find a meta, it is trying to find new ways of doing combat. Everyone thinks Artillery is king and it is to a certain point, I hope the last 3-4 videos shows other options for players to use that can beat artillery and be strong in its own right.
If by kitchen sink do you mean designed to hit hull, armor and shields at same time? I call that an Omni design if thats what you mean.
That could be an interesting build actually.
@@tachyonlance1969 The omni build I use is Arc for hull, fighters/missile for armor and KA for shields
Nothing for armor?
Nominating Neutron Launcher cruisers with Kinetic Artillery to beat the final plasma design. Especially with the lower shield capacity, the multiplicative damage should over power the regen I think
Yes, they would, but not testing mixed fleet designs as I would use other cruisers to counter them. Seeing how to counter Kinetic Artillery and found a few builds to do.
The X slot is kinda bad on plasma. Try x2 L slots with autocanons , or S-M-L with autocanons. If you go plasma, those are no more long range turrets , they are more cruisers on steroids. The X slot is fine if you go with arty ship design , but plasma is not the go go with.
And you want 3 utility slots - 2 hardenings (or repaires) + 1 after burner to get into range.
Also if stuck full armor to face kinetic fleet - just 1 plasma fleet or laser fleet will wrek you.
I was saying in discord - I do run different fleets , I may have 1 kinetic , 1 plasma , 1 rocket fleet , just in case I need to deal with 1 specific target. At the very end they have in avarage pretty same efficincy , but in case you take a fight 3 different fleets vs 3 same composition - you can have an upperhand if one of yours is hight more efficient
I tried a number of weapons instead of X slot weapons, Kinetic Arty and Auto Cannons, it was terrible X slot was far superior. The A slots had 3 x nanites repairers.
The point of the video is to show how to beat artillery battleships and even when they stacked full shields which nullify plasma, they did worse as the Ancient Saturator gives out the highest DPS of any X slot weapon when you have more shields to burn through hence why that did not work.
Ofcourse you can use other fleet combinations to beat it, that's not the point. If you only run one ship design, then you leave yourself open to being countered easily. This is just to show how Artillery can be beaten with Plasma.
So… what do you think is your standard “go to” fleet against AI and when you don’t have much, or any, intel? I appreciate seeing what counters work, but it’s always difficult to figure out which design I should be building in my single player games.
Thats a good question, I should do a video to answer that very question. I would normally have fleets of Carrier & Artillery Battleships (will add Plasma or Laser now too), Torpedo Cruiser fleets using devastator torps with afterburners to deal massive damage and they help to tank damage to keep it off my battleships. Then I might have 3-5 fleets of corvettes with 2 x disrupters and PD/Flak, two designs with 50/50 split of each to swarm the enemy shot down strike craft/missiles and torps. That will be more than enough to deal with the AI. For crises you need to be more specific with weapon and defenses to counter each one.
@@tachyonlance1969 yeah, I meant in general not with the specific crisis fleets. I think a video would be very helpful! I see that question posted all the time on the forums.
Ok well I will try and work on something over the next week, as it is a very good point. Tell me, what would I call this type of video, a catchy headline for the thumbnail or title since it is your idea.
@@tachyonlance1969 Hmm... I'm certainly not one for catchy names, haha. Maybe something like "The Best Grand Admiral Fleet!" or "The Meta Go-To Fleet" or "Best Omni Fleet Design!"
AI never use hardeners, so bypass weapon will murder them. (disruptors, focus arc emitters, etc)
Missile/torp is doing a good job too.
Ships = cruisers.
First: the new mic is sounding quite good.
Second: the result vs almost all shields was quite surprising again!
Maybe Paradox over-nerferd shields in the last combat rebalance? Or maybe 3 Nanite Repair Systems are too good? To check this, could you please test all armor + 3 Nanite Repair Systems vs TL + all lasers first with line and then with artillery computers? If they can hold vs those builds then this is the best possible defensive option in which case you would have found a "strictly better build" for all battleships.
Third: TLs do so much damage (as seen in each battle with the alpha strikes) that it could also be worth testing TL + plasma vs heavy shields to see if archeotech is a "must have" or just a "nice to have" for the plasma build.
Thanks for the feedback on the sound.
Yes I want to do more testing to see if the nanite repair will work well with other builds to turn it from a loss and into victory or was it the shear power of the ancient saturator in both cases but even more so against builds with more shields. Great to use the ancient saturator against crisis heavy in shields like the unbidden. I will give your design some testing to see if they work well, looks good on paper.
That sort of plasma setup is what I generally prefer. Although ancient saturator is REALLY expensive to spam so idk how feasible that is. But I've found high damage armor/hull weapons to be superior to smaller damage weapons as you don't give the enemy any chance to retreat. And that's the problem I have with penetration weapons. Yes they do good dps but they get fewer kills overall so more often than not even a win is more of a Pyrrhic victory.
Also against players I would guess one can assume that they will turn on the astral shield edict giving them some hardening even without having any direct counters in their designs.
Yes, plasma and energy weapons overall are great for kills. Bypass weapons might win some battles but yes more do retreat. That Astral edict for shield hardening is great, 25%, plus 25% shield strength. Expensive to keep running though, over 60 per month. But if you have a lot of Arc Furnaces you can actually get more of them and you can build Dyson Swarm around stars that have them (don't recall if you can get them around stars or not) and get like more per month but so for relics, can get 60-70 per month from one Dyson Swarm if you want to go that path.
@@tachyonlance1969 Yeah probably won't have it on at all times but you also aren't fighting game-changing battles 24/7 so with some micro I find that you can have it on for most if not all battles.
Or you're just a pro-gamer and get the Eternal Throne.
E: Pretty sure the astral threads are not affected by arc furnaces as they come from science stations but don't quote me on that.
Yes, like edicts, turn it on when you need it and then turn it off.
Dyson Swarms can affect science as well, it just multiplies the science of the star by 3000%, not sure if you get any of those astral resources around stars though, I don't recall seeing any.
@@tachyonlance1969 Yeah I've seen people do some funny stuff with the event that adds artifacts to a star. Think they got like 60/month from that. Don't recall seeing any astral threads around stars though. Would be pretty potent. The other two astral edicts are pretty good as well.
Yea if you build a Dyson swarm around the star with the artifacts you can get 63 I think it is per month, that will be for a lot of upgraded archo weapons.
As expected, seens like hardening modules is a must when engaging bypass enemies. If not, your simply gonna lose battles you shouldve won.
Yes, that is for sure, if you know your enemy likes to use bypass weapons you need at least one or a mix depending on your armor/shield mix.
@@tachyonlance1969 Yep preferably armor as it's less susceptible to enemy starbase countermeasures and system modifiers.
Yes, and it offers just more hits points in general although it is more costly as well. Hence why Ancient Saturator Cannon and Plasma will work so well against everyone stacking so much armor.
I've gotten Good use out of combination fleets with artillery and carrier battleships, and plasma and autocannon cruisers destroyers and Corvettes. Against everything except the fallen empires it really works quite well.
Good to know as I do want to start testing fleet combinations with this kind of setup on some future videos. I will give it a try. Thanks for the comment.
The nanite repair system can also be obtained from the Scavenger Leviathan.
Thats right, I knew there was another way to get it but could not recall, thank you.
My analysis is a bit different... It might sound noob, but all the comparisons focus on the gun deppartment, and not so much on shields vs armour, and from the thousands of hours I have on the game, right now armour with nanite repair systems are OP in most situations, because it makes the ships way more tanky and can hold the impact on the first strike way better then shields or a balanced aproach.. But that is just me, I might be wrong. And the meta is kind of weird right now, not so certain, and for higher difficulties in the weapons deppartment it depends a lot on what your enemy is using and counter it.
You raise a good point and I have done some testing on nanite repair in the past but nanites were hard to come by then so no one really uses them too much. Not so now. I should do further testing using some of the strong builds but making it more amour and nanite repair and see how the results turn out compared to previously. It could be the nanite repair paired with high armour levels. So it would work even better with dragon scale armour for example. Thanks for the great comment.
@@tachyonlance1969 Well, I beliebe that the nanite repair system is important, because it also impacts hull if I am not mistaken, but the thing is that for most builds shields are becoming less and less strong. For example, unless you go full shields, they are always the lesser value when compared to armour or hull. Another thing is in smaller vessels, the higher tier shields are super energy hungry and you can't properly use them. Plus, if you want to use stealth, then shields are even worst, because of the nulification. And lastly, by using more armour you gain a few more % on excess energy that are converted to damage (altough not that game changing, it might help). I'm not saying shields are not important, I'm just saying they are not so much important in most game styles (except certain end game crysis, but that is super specific). Sorry for the long post ahah
I agree and it is why most players stack more armor these days. Shields in my opinion need a buff to at least make it an equal decision between the two or nerf armor a little. I will test out the impact of nanite repair more over the coming week on other ship designs as well and see how it goes.
I use a very sim build of Tachyon, Three Kinetics, and twin Medium Missile swarms for close in fighting.
That is an interesting mix and design. Thanks for the comment.
I think the biggest problem with KA ships is their inability to snowball. They offer good damage over time, but with half of this damage being spread about the battle, it can only rely on the Tachyon lance to score kills when it comes off cooldown.
You could try running a mix of Lance/KA/Plasma with 1 or 2 KA and 2+ Large Plasma. This would allow you to keep finishing enemies off between big hits from the Tachyon Lance. Otherwise, you can see how an all-energy weapon build works, running Lance/Lasers or Lance/Plasma. If you run lasers (w/ or w/o 2 Medium autocannons in stern) you wouldn't even need Decoders since all your weapons would hit 100% accuracy with the computer.
I have had good results with T, K,K,K, Laser.
Yes a few people have suggested I try auto cannons on the stern as well to help with shields. Might be enough to give TL a try as well so you don’t have to use an ascension for archo engineers. I will try it out and see how it goes. Thanks for the comment.
That looks interesting as well, I will give it a try.
Interesting. I'm now curious if 4 large plasma is better than than 3 large and 2 medium despite the 1 less utility slot. I'd also be curious what happens when you just do tachyon lance and 4 large plasma. I figure they wouldn't be effective against shields but would the hull damage overwhelm the adversary fleet?
I am interested in the TL and Plasma, but the Ancient Saturation Cannon did a mountain of work on the shields, I think it was over 300k damage pretty quickly, TL won't do that to shields so I think it would be a lot different battle. Or you can put 2 x autocannons on the M slots which will help but I still think it was the ASC that did the bulk of the work taking down the shields, but more testing is needed.
Surprised before making the jump to nanike repair I thought you might have gone double auto cannons to finish off remaining shields to not take such a large damage reduction to chew through it with plasma. In addition to keeping afterburner to get into range faster.
The ancient saturator is more than enough to deal with the shields, that thing is insane with this build. I can give it a go though rather than the extra 2 M slot plasmas. Need the nanite repair to make the ships more survival, going to do more testing on this. Thanks for the comment.
My thoughts were an auto cannon or two on each shin can eat away the others that the xslot hasn’t fired up but I’m not sure about the reload rate of the cannon compared the the regen of some ships’ shields.
what is the difference assuming repeatable are in question. after stacking armor and shield repeats, I just exclusively use bypass weapons.
Well it will be harder for weapons to get through them but you normally also increase damage as well such as kinetic or energy damage increase. Bypass is great but keep in mind if you play PvP some hardening techs will make bypass generally lose and sometimes the AI will use it.
How about a mixed battleship fleet of 50/50 of saturator/plasma & artillery/tachyon.
I'm curious to see how fleets would perform with a mixture of ship designs in the same class
If you are going to use archeotech perk then how does the Ancient ruination X slot weapon do when combined with KA ?
Good question have not tested that out yet, but I will.
in general tachyon lance are better , they have weak punch on shields , the main advantage is the base precision and the 0 min-range. maybe a tachyon + plasma vs ancient saturator + plasma would make it visible if tachyon is worth it anyway .
I was thinking along these lines to see if the TL and Plasma or Laser could bust through the shields and then smash into the amour then hull, but the kinetic artillery would smash shields faster allowing their TL to attack armor faster but then the KA is at disadvantage vs the armor as well. So, it is really a race in who can out DPS the other with the various bonuses they have. Worth testing though.
You can further improve the cloud lightning design by swapping out large slots for mediums to replace a couple of the Cloud Lightning with some pairs of Phase Disruptors.
They ship becomes more susceptable to kiting, but cloud lightning already has that weakness, and the dps is MUCH higher.
In fact, for what I feel would be the optimal bypass battleship I'd take Hangar Core and Broadside Stern with Phase Disruptors and Advanced Strike Craft, or the best available.
Cloud Lightning just have very low DPS compared to the equivalent weapon systems.
I am aware that Disruptors are currently banned in the most major pvp lobbies, but cloud lightning is just kinda a bad weapon system.
Good points with improving the cloud lightning design will have to try it out.
Not sure why disrupters are banned, destroyers with missiles and after burners kite them around and kill them with minimal losses at least the corvette version of them. Disrupter Cruisers cannot out DPS Cruisers with torpedos. So, I think it was a knee jerk reaction as there are plenty of counters to disrupters even early in the game, once you have Destroyers.
@@tachyonlance1969 I think it's mostly a psychological remnant of the fact that there was a pretty long time where disruptors were busted OP with no real counters. They're still quite strong even after counters have been added too.
Yea could be, plus I think in one tournament a few people used them a lot to good effect, clearly, they need to watch some of my videos I made on countering disrupters, even very early on. From memory kiting destroyers with either lvl 2 or 3 missiles killed all the disrupter corvettes with only a few losses.
@@tachyonlance1969 Fleet maneuver's pre combat make disruptors strategically toxic. If one side has disruptors and camps hyperlanes they cannot lose to anything but disruptors. Even if you use torpedoes, guess what you put in the other weapon slots on those torpedo ships? More disruptors. Even with the explosive damage combat computers
The goal of banning anything is to increase the diversity of options, and banning disruptors drastically increases the number of valid ship designs.
Good point. Well, if players are camping jump points at least they are not invading you but can also be a strong defense if you are massively out gunned by a stronger player. In most of those PvP tournaments, never witnessed much camping of hyperplanes with people using disrupters.
Curious, did you leave the kinetic artillery at line combat computer? Plasma have a much better overall DPS but at 66% of the range, can suffer from being kited by speedier ships with longer range. Line computer gives up KA’s advantage, so maybe a try with KA, TL, and afterburners in artillery combat computer to get more shots first while also kiting away?
Yes, it remained at Line computer; I did say at the very end might need to try artillery combat computer to counter this powerful plasma build. But then you can just switch in lasers for plasma, and you beat KA at range as well as per my previous video. You could have 2 fleets, 1 with KA at line and one with KA for artillery, vs 2 fleets, 1 with laser and 1 with plasma. The Laser and Plasma wins.
One thing to remember about kiting: it seems to be determined by a half of a ship's median weapon range. With a Sentient Computer, Majority KA ships will only kite at 72 range, less than the standard range of Large Plasma or Lasers. This is possibly why in previous tests, Laser/AC BBs had no trouble staying in range to sustain laser fire.
Yes, you have that but also most of the battles take place on the edge of the system where they have no more room to fall back too and keep at range. Who knew you could run out of space in space.
Of all the X slot weapons getting the archeotech one is actually a lot easier than the others due to you kinda only need archeotech...
Yes, it is easy to get. I was surprised when I stacked the shield in the last battle, I was expecting Artillery to win but the damage output from the Ancient Saturator on those shields was higher than anything I have ever seen for an X slot weapon. It has 150% bonus vs shield then add another 33% for the ascension. So even stacking shields which puts plasma at a disadvantage did not work as the Ancient Saturator made such short work of them, they did worse than when it was an even split of amour and shields.
@@tachyonlance1969 actually the 33% is I think multiplicative
so rather than it being a +183% its more like a +232.5% (to the shields at least)
Oh, very nice, well that explains a lot and makes it even better to use that ascension. Makes sense to be multiplicative as it is an ascension which is a large investment.
@@tachyonlance1969 Tho for machines their is this ascension that increases L slot XL slot and T slot weapons with an additional 15% so possible
it was Mechromancy
Oh yes, I have seen that but not used it yet, so that adds more firepower output. As it is an ascension you would think that would be multiplicative again. You know this could be a powerful build potentially, you need 2 ascensions, but your fleets would be so powerful using these weapons. I am going to go have a look at it.
Mic sounds good. Plasma did quite well too. Curious how lasers will do now. i think the only counter is itself lol, or Lance/Plasma. Possibly Lance/ 1 KA + 2 L pla/ 2 M pla?
I did try 2 x KA instead of the Giga Cannon and Ancient Saturator, but it did so poorly was not worth including, using an X slot is just so much better then 2 x KA. I will keep testing laser, isn't there a relic or astral plane that gives +25% to energy weapons. I have not seen the same for kinetic weapons, they all have bonuses from edicts.
Oh, and thanks on the sound comment, hopefully it an improvement, will keep working on it over time.
@@tachyonlance1969 There is the astral thing, but its expencive to use. I thought these tests was without edicts/repeatables right now because they change up the variables ALOT, especially repeatables.
What i meant with the design was the first section has a lance, second section has 1 KA and 2 Large Plasma, and 2 medium plasmas in 3rd section. I think that might give it a run for its money.
I was just curious to know, I just recall seeing it as good to use in a game situation when you need to, if you can afford it.
Sounds like a good design, worth testing out.
If you go for hardening, I'd say it's more useful to go either shields or armor, not both. 10k armor with 50% hardening or 10k shields with 50% hardening is a lot better than 5k and 25% on both. At least against 100% bypass because you'll almost always have more shields and armor than hull points, so your ships will die long before they run out of shield and armor points.
I must say I expected the regeneration to perform better; I think it's safe to say that you were right about the regeneration having only 10% effectiveness during battle. Good, you can imagine how broken it would be at full strength. My fleets against the AI are almost indestructible so I must conclude that the AI just sucks at fleet and ship design.
One thing I'd be curious to see is how a carrier fleet would stack up against the artillery ships, the strike craft should have a lot longer engagement range than even the X-slot weapons. If carriers prove to be effective, I'd also be curious to see whether the 3 hangar carrier design or the 2 hangar plus an x-slot carrier design would fare better. The strike craft engagement range gets a lot better with higher tier combat computers too (as long as you use the carrier computer obviously). My hypothesis would be that a carrier fleet with 3 carrier slots and 3 A-slots filled with after burners could kite the artillery fleet well enough to significantly reduce their ability to get shots fired; the carrier fleet should spread out really wide and try to be at max range forcing the artillery fleet to waste time chasing them and thus not being able to keep firing 100% of the time. The X-Slot Carrier design would have to make a decision between artillery combat computer for extra x-slot range and the added strike craft engagement range of the carrier computer.
Yes, the hardening would work a lot better with stacking it all to armor or shields but the point of the videos is to show strong builds without having to make it really niche or stack things so strongly to one side. OfCourse players can choose to do that but if you stack all armor, you risk being wiped out by someone who has a lot of energy weapons or vis versa for shields.
As for carriers, no they get killed easily against Kinetic Artillery, KA is the direct counter to kill carriers very effectively. So, if you ever fighting AI or a human player using lots of Carriers, stack up that Artillery and you will wipe them easily.
I think the lazer version is gone do worse, due to they have less bonus to armor and hull
Probably, plasma always did more damage just laser had a higher fire rate for continuous fire but it can't do enough damage fast enough to stop the Artillery, well not when combined with the TL which is also very powerful with the +20-line computer. Far more effective than using artillery. Right now, for X slot weapons, better of using line computer, you get much more DPS out of them.
What's the mod you're using that changes the appearance of notification so they stack like that?
It is the base game, no mods. Might just be screen resolution.
@@tachyonlance1969 Figured this out right after. It's the UI scaling.
Ok. I have not adjusted mine, that I recall. It is just how it has worked for some time.
I wish the video was shorter and more concise.